Ice and Climate Newsletter
Volume 33: November 2019

ISSN 1811-0843

In this issue:

Science Feature

initMIP-Antarctica: an ice sheet model initialization experiment of ISMIP6

--ISMIP6 is a CliC Targeted Activity and part of the WCRP Grand Challenge on Melting Ice and Global Consequences

Antarctic contribution to sea level from 25 simulations (mm of sea level equivalent) for (a) the control experiment with constant forcing, (b) the difference between surface mass balance anomaly and control experiments, and (c) difference between ice shelf melt anomaly and control experiments. Negative values of sea level represent a growing ice sheet. Note the large spread in (c) compared to (b).

Citation: Seroussi, H., Nowicki, S., Simon, E., Abe-Ouchi, A., Albrecht, T., Brondex, J., Cornford, S., Dumas, C., Gillet-Chaulet, F., Goelzer, H., Golledge, N. R., Gregory, J. M., Greve, R., Hoffman, M. J., Humbert, A., Huybrechts, P., Kleiner, T., Larour, E., Leguy, G., Lipscomb, W. H., Lowry, D., Mengel, M., Morlighem, M., Pattyn, F., Payne, A. J., Pollard, D., Price, S. F., Quiquet, A., Reerink, T. J., Reese, R., Rodehacke, C. B., Schlegel, N.-J., Shepherd, A., Sun, S., Sutter, J., Van Breedam, J., van de Wal, R. S. W., Winkelmann, R., and Zhang, T.: initMIP-Antarctica: an ice sheet model initialization experiment of ISMIP6, The Cryosphere, 13, 1441–1471,

This paper is part of the ISMIP6 Special Issue in the EGU journal The Cryosphere.

CliC News

Polar Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) Annual meeting, October 7-9, 2019, Copenhagen, Denmark

--Contributed by Annette Rinke, John Cassano, and Andrew Orr

The annual Polar CORDEX meeting took place at the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) in Copenhagen on October 7-9, 2019. About 30 participants actively participated. The meeting was opened by a keynote on the role of regional climate modeling in the IPCC and we discussed the actual regional climate projection contributions to the upcoming AR6 report. For this, the status of both the Arctic and Antarctic CORDEX community was summarized - what has been done so far, common projects and papers. The scientific presentations were focussed on following key topics:
(i) Surface mass balance of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Their changes and key drivers were discussed based on different models, and model intercomparisons have been accomplished. Simulated recent and future climate change over the Antarctic Peninsula region were also presented.
(ii) Coupled modeling and its challenges and benefits. For the Arctic, results from atmosphere-ocean models with respect to cyclones and their feedbacks, and improved model physics and model optimization have been presented. The intra-annual prediction of Arctic sea ice is a promising new capability. For Antarctica, efforts towards coupling of the atmosphere with ocean and ice sheet have been presented.
(iii) Model evaluation. Studies over Greenland and near Svalbard were presented. For the Arctic Ocean, the comparison with the ACSE2014 campaign data includes a multi-model intercomparison. Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice lead data sets have been compiled.
(iv) Challenges of high resolution downscaling. Impacts of sea-ice forcing, different physics and resolution, uncertainty assessment and methods to select CMIP6 models have been discussed. The status of the upcoming high resolution Arctic regional reanalysis CARRA has been presented.
Finally, potential future developments of Polar CORDEX were discussed. This includes the contribution of Arctic CORDEX to MOSAiC and YOPPsiteMIP.

CliC representation at OceanObs'19, September 16-20, 2019, HI, USA

Ronald Buss de Souza, Center for Weather Forecast and Climate Studies (CPTEC), National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Brazil:

Robin Robertson, Xiamen University, Malaysia:
'Generally, my research is focused on wind and tidal mixing and I have done lots of research in the Antarctic.  At OceanObs19, there was very little on turbulence or mixing at the meeting.  Prof. Rob Pinkel wrote a white paper, but turbulence was deemed to be not mature enough to be included.  I publicly objected to this. Additionally, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean were included in the Polar session and lost out to the Arctic, understandable as it is the Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP), which seems to be Arctic focused.  We should address this in the next OceanObs meeting in 10 (or 5) years in Qingdao by having one or more breakout sessions on the Southern Ocean AND the Antarctic.

Despite this, I had an extremely productive meeting.  Probably the most applicable development for the general Southern Ocean and Antarctic community was the priority to fill in the gaps in the existing data coverage.  They mentioned the ocean east of Africa, but the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic are big gaps, especially spatially in the coastal regions and/or ice covered areas and temporally during spring and winter.  And there was significant information about the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and the ocean research being carried out in China.  I found the breakout sessions more productive than the plenaries and panel discussions, which tended to be a bit vague.  There is a lot of movement on data availability and end user engagement.  Integrating with the modelers was a priority, which as a modeler who does observations was of great encouragement to me.  So despite the first paragraph, I had a very productive meeting in many different aspects: saw new instruments and vehicles for instrument deployment, talked to Jules Hummon about ADCP processing, attended several Early Career Functions as a mentor, had several discussions about future collaborations, etc.'

CliC Co-sponsor of the International Glaciological Society’s Sea ice Symposium, August 19-23, 2019, Winnipeg, Canada

CliC co-sponsored the IGS Sea Ice Symposium held in Winnipeg in August and provided funding for 3 workshops organized in conjunction with the Symposium (see below). The IGS co-hosts a sea ice symposium every 5 years. The Centre for Earth Observation Science (University of Manitoba) hosted the first IGS event held in Canada. The symposium included oral and poster sessions, and provided a friendly and intellectually stimulating environment to facilitate face-to-face interactions and networking. Sea ice plays a critically important yet highly dynamic role in global climate, polar marine ecosystems, globalization, and Indigenous cultures. The theme of this event focused on the implications that changes to sea icescapes and freshwater-marine coupling  particularly involving ice sheets, glaciers, ice shelves, sea ice loss and continental runoff have on climate systems within and beyond polar regions, environmental and ecological integrity, and socioeconomic development at the regional to global scales. For more information visit the IGS Sea Ice Symposium website.

Biogeochemical Exchange Processes at the Sea Ice Interfaces (BEPSII) Meeting in conjunction with the International Glaciological Society’s Sea ice Symposium, August 16-18, 2019, Winnipeg, Canada

--Contributed by Martin Vancoppenolle

BEPSII is an open network for international knowledge exchange related to sea ice biogeochemistry.

The 2019 BEPSII (Biogeochemical Exchange Processes at the Sea Ice Interfaces) meeting took place this year in Winnipeg, on the side of the IGS sea ice symposium, from August 16 to 18.

The workshop spanned three days, split into activities related to each of the five BEPSII’s task groups, including (i) the SCOR working group ECV-ICE focused on methodologies, (ii) technology & data collation, (iii) modelling & observational process studies, (iv) synthesis and (v) outreach.

Highlights of this year include inter-comparison field & lab experiments in Japan and UK focused on ice optics and gases; the development of a new eddy-covariance technique to measure CO2 fluxes over sea ice (Butterworth and Else, Atmos Meas. Tech. 2019); finalization of a synthesis paper dedicated to outline the impacts of upcoming sea ice changes on biogeochemistry and ecosystems; discussions around a possible sea ice ecosystem services synthesis; and progresses around two model inter-comparison exercises.

Perspectives for BEPSII were also discussed. Key items included plans for an upcoming field school (possibly scheduled for 2021 in Cambridge Bay, Canada), plans for a specific BEPSII cruise, the involvement of early-career scientists, and  revision of our 5-year plan.

Next meeting will be held in Hobart, summer 2020, next to the SCAR open science conference.

Antarctic Sea-ice Processes and Climate (ASPeCt) Meeting in conjunction with the International Glaciological Society’s Sea ice Symposium, August 18, 2019, Winnipeg, Canada

The ASPeCt expert group held a three-hour side-meeting at the International Glaciological Society’s Sea ice Symposium in Winnipeg, Manitoba on August 18th, 2019. A representative subset of the group (20 -25 members) attended the meeting including several Early Career scientists whose attendance was supported by the WCRP Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) Project. The meeting began with updates and news including the outcome of ASPeCt’s YOPP effort, the Japanese Antarctic Program and the Polarstern Weddell Sea expedition this year. These were excellent examples of the progress of ASPeCt-related science. A proposal for a drifting project of Polarstern in the northwestern Weddell Sea as a repeat but updated ISPOL (Ice Station POLarstern) 2004 observations. This proposal was met with much enthusiasm and the group decided that part of the planned ASPeCt workshop at SCAR2020 in Hobart would be spent discussing and planning ISPOL-2D. The updates were followed by some extensive discussion on optimizing ASPeCt’s web presence (website, Twitter), updating the ASPeCt database and encouraging scientific use of the data as well as encouraging use of the Due South planning tool.    
 
The rest of the meeting focused on three main topics: 1. ASPeCt’s planned workshop at XXXVI SCAR, in 2020 – The workshop’s theme, timing and duration were discussed. Coordination with other groups with shared interests, e.g BEPSII and SOOS was also discussed.  2. Identifying critical Antarctic sea ice areas for targeted observations in the next    5 – 8 years 3. ASPeCt’s science objectives for the next 5 – 10 years. Proposed ideas include development of a protocol on snow measurements on (Antarctic) sea ice, autonomous observations of sea ice and snow and a focus on modelling.  These three topics were discussed extensively and the main points of the discussion have since been distributed to the larger group. It is anticipated that with further online discussion, the details of the workshop will soon be finalized and decisions on identifying sea ice areas for targeted observations as well as ASPeCt’s science objectives will be taken at the workshop.

Sea Ice Modeling Intercomparison Project (SIMIP) Meeting in conjunction with the International Glaciological Society’s Sea ice Symposium, August 18, 2019, Winnipeg, Canada

A successful and very lively and informative half-day SIMIP workshop was held before the IGS Sea Ice Symposium in Winnipeg. The workshop was live-streamed, and 24 people attended in person and 5 online, with 2 of the remote participants presenting at the workshop. Five of the in-person participants received partial travel support from CliC to attend the workshop.

The workshop was designed as a mix of short research presentations and updates from targeted analysis groups established at the last SIMIP workshop and discussions. We started with a welcome and an update on SIMIP by the SIMIP chairs, Alexandra Jahn and Dirk Notz, including the sea ice CMIP6 data currently available on the CMIP6 archives and the deadline for paper submissions and acceptance for inclusion in the next IPCC report (December 31st 2019 and September 30th 2020, respectively).

Dirk Notz then updated everyone on the plans for a SIMIP community paper, which has the goal to summarize the overall sea ice state in CMIP6 and the change to CMIP5, authored by the SIMIP community. It has the goal to establish how sea ice loss is represented in CMIP6, so that individual scientists can focus on the more interesting in-depth and process-based analysis. This update was followed by discussions on the SIMIP paper, in terms of what kind of analysis should be included. This was followed by 4 short presentations on new CMIP5/CMIP6 results, which were well received and represented some of the first CMIP6 sea ice analysis shared.

The activity leads from the targeted analysis efforts established at the 2017 SIMIP workshop then were invited to present updates on progress and plans under their activities. We had 10 groups provide updates, either in person or by sending slides or written updates, and all had very interesting results and plans to share, which sparked many discussions.

After a short break, we then heard short presentations on new observational data sets that can be used for climate model evaluation, in particular focused on ice thickness datasets. This was followed by a discussion to revise the SIMIP community paper, to solicit further feedback after all the updates and some of the new CMIP6 results were shared. The workshop was followed by a no-host lunch at a local place, attended by 12 participants, providing an opportunity to continue conversations.

Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6 (ISMIP6) Meeting in conjunction with the 27th International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics General Assembly, July 14, 2019, Montreal, Canada

--Contributed by Sophie Nowicki

The Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6 (ISMIP6) held a workshop on July 14th 2019 in Montreal, Canada, in conjunction with the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) General Assembly. The workshop’s goal was to review and finalize the experimental framework for projections of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet’s contribution to sea level change. The focus was on experiments with ice sheet models that are driven offline from output from CMIP5 climate models, as well as simulations from CMIP6 coupled ice-sheet climate models. The meeting was attended by 25 participants with expertise in ice sheet modeling, climate modeling, polar ocean and polar atmosphere. The meeting was organized by the ISMIP6 steering committee, with travel support from the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) via the Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) Project.

As ISMIP6 reaches its final stage, topics that were presented and discussed include: A review of the ISMIP6 effort and what we are learned from our first set of experiments of ice sheet model initialization (initMIP efforts). A review of the CMIP5 climate model selections, and how changes in the atmosphere and ocean characteristics translate into atmospheric and oceanic forcing for standalone ice sheet models. Initial submissions to the suite of core ISMIP6 projections for the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets were presented and guided the discussion the next suite of experiments (targeted) for standalone ice sheet models. Simulations from CMIP6 coupled ice sheet-climate models (CESM and UKESM) were also presented. The next phase of ISMIP6 was discussed, which included topics such as how to include simulation with CMIP6 climate models as these become available, as well as publication strategy.

Glacier Modelling Intercomparison Project (GlacierMIP) Meeting in conjunction with the 27th International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics General Assembly, July 13, 2019, Montreal, Canada

--Contributed by Ben Marzeion

Eight participants attended theGlacierMIP meeting in person and one remotely. Ben Marzeion, GlacierMIP Co-chair, presented a first glimpse at the GlacierMIP2 results: the ensemble is large (~200 individual runs from 10 different glacier models) and coordination was generally successful (i.e., good coverage of the prioritized CMIP5 runs). Some seemingly unrealistic results of individual glacier models were taken up with the individual groups. Some results were subsequently updated/corrected/questions clarified.

For IPCC AR6, experiments additional to these already collected will be very useful. In particular, everybody who can do so was asked to provide additional runs based on the CMIP6 ensemble. Since this ensemble is small, but constantly growing, a decision on which ensemble member to prioritize needs to be taken later. For this purpose, a telecom is envisioned in fall 2019. The results of these runs do not have to be included in the submission of the GlacierMIP2-paper, but can be accepted by IPCC as an update. To address issues of response time scale (which may become a focus of glaciers in AR6), equilibrium experiments (of probably a smaller ensemble of glacier models) will be helpful.

There is strong agreement that GlacierMIP was a successful endeavor so far and should be prolonged if possible. The foci of a second phase should include
• equilibrium experiments at different climate states
• reconstructions of glacier change
• detection & attribution experiment
• sensitivity analyses of model physics
• separation of parameter and climate (forcing) uncertainty
A group was tasked with preparing a proposal for prolongation of GlacierMIP within this year.

A telecom is planned for autumn 2019, and the next physical meeting for EGU 2020 in Vienna.

Polar Climate Predictability Initiative Meeting in conjunction with the 27th International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics General Assembly, July 11, 2019, Montreal, Canada

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Upcoming CliC Events

9th Permafrost Carbon Network Annual Meeting in conjunction with AGU
December 8, 2019, San Francisco, USA

CliC Session at AGU - C52A - Cryosphere Changes: Integrative Research and Synthesis I
December 13, 2019, 12:20am-12:20pm, Moscone West-2008, L2, San Francisco, USA

15th Session of the CliC Scientific Steering Group in conjunction with AGU
December 14-15, 2019, San Francisco, USA

Click here to see more upcoming events

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