THE ACCIMA PROJECT – COUPLED MODELING OF THE HIGH SOUTHERN LATITUDES
Understanding the mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet is critical for projecting global sea-level change. Also, Antarctica provides key climate records through deep ice cores, one of which is currently being extracted in West Antarctica. On decadal and shorter timescales, the Antarctic Ice Sheet...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.666.5050 http://polarmet.osu.edu/ACCIMA/ACCIMA_bromwich_etal_201306.pdf |
| Summary: | Understanding the mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet is critical for projecting global sea-level change. Also, Antarctica provides key climate records through deep ice cores, one of which is currently being extracted in West Antarctica. On decadal and shorter timescales, the Antarctic Ice Sheet responds to climate phenomena such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the Southern Annular Mode, and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) loses volume due to outlet glaciers draining into the Amundsen Sea (Thomas et al. 2004; Pritchard et al. 2009) and the rate of loss has been increasing in recent years (Chen et al. 2009). One proposed reason for the supposed increased basal melt of ice shelves in the region (Payne et al. 2004) is a change in either the temperature or circulation of warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) that enters the subglacial area providing heat to increase the basal melt rate. Representing such processes in our coupled model presents a fascinating challenge. The Atmosphere-ocean Coupling Causing Ice shelf Melt in Antarctica (ACCIMA) collaborative project combines a team of researchers at The Ohio State University (OSU), New York University (NYU) and Old Dominion University (ODU) to model the multi-disciplinary processes impacting the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Important mesoscale phenomena in the atmosphere and ocean deliver heat to the bottom of the floating Antarctic ice shelves, such as those in the Amundsen Sea embayment. Therefore, a mesoscale approach is |
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