A Workshop to Develop a Science and Implementation Plan For Projecting Future Sea-Level Rise from Land-Ice Loss

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This award provides support for "A Workshop to Develop a Science and Implementation Plan For Projecting Future Sea-Level Rise from Land-Ice Loss" to be held in July 2010. The workshop will bring together up to 46 U.S. scientists (with six of the slots reserved for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers) from many different fields including modeling, glaciology, oceanography, geology, and atmospheric science. The three overarching goals of the workshop are to 1) provide an overview of the current scientific understanding of ice-sheet dynamics; 2) to discuss ways to improve our understanding and modeling of the dynamic response of ice sheets to climate change, specifically by identifying the major sources of the uncertainties in developing sea level predictions; and 3) to identify the critical observational and modeling strategies need to reduce the uncertainties. Intellectual Merit: We have ample evidence from satellite imagery that land ice is being lost at a faster than expected rate, and the NSF has several funded projects that are beginning to address the reasons why land ice losses are accelerating, but there has not been a concerted effort to bring together a broad interdisciplinary team to address what (and where) we should be focusing our research dollars on in the next five years to best understand the why (process) question. The proposed workshop will deliver to the land ice loss community, the NSF, and other interested agencies a document summarizing and prioritizing the research topics that need to be addressed to understand the processes driving accelerated land ice loss. Broader Impact: Land ice loss is now thought to contribute more than half of the current sea level rise, and projections show the contribution of land ice loss is only going to increase. With 145 million people living on land only one meter above sea level, we must improve our predictions of sea level rise. This is going to take a concerted interagency effort, and the workshop is one step towards defining the path we need to take.A draft workshop report will be completed within two months of the meeting, and the report will then be circulated to the community for comment, and discussed at several scientific meetings before being submitted as a final document intended to be broadly available. Approximately half of the participants will be invited, and half of the participants will be selected via a competitive process. Funds provided by the NSF will only be used to support US scientists. Inclusion of early career scientists and students in the presentation and discussion of a necessarily interdisciplinary, integrated, and truly cutting edge area of Antarctic science will be extremely valuable in training the next generation of Antarctic researchers.