Implementation of Advanced Land-Ice Models in the Community Earth System Model

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This award provides support for "Implementation of Advanced Land-Ice Models in the Community Earth System Model" from the Antarctic Integrated System Science and Arctic Natural Science programs within the Office of Polar Programs. Future rates of sea-level rise in a time of climate change are highly uncertain, but global mean sea level could rise by more than one meter by the year 2100 if contributions from melting ice sheets continue to increase. Understanding future global sea level is hindered by the fact that full coupling of the Glimmer Community Ice Sheet Model (Glimmer-CISM) into the Community Earth System Model (CESM) has not been completed. This award will provide support for a software engineer to complete the task of coupling the ice model to the climate model in a fully dynamic mode. The software engineer will also serve as a liaison between the Land Ice Working Group (LIWG) and the climate modelers.Intellectual Merit: The authors propose to fully couple a land-ice sheet model (Glimmer-CISM) to a GCM (CESM). The coupling, when successful, will deliver the dynamic coupling called out as missing in the last IPCC report. The lack of a dynamic component for the ice-sheets led the last IPCC AR4 authors to exclude the contribution of ice-sheets to sea-level rise. Following the successful coupling of the models, the team (including the LIWG) will determine the range of sea-level rise associated with the loss of land-ice to support the IPCC AR5.Broader Impact: While funding will go specifically to one individual, the work is being done on community models, so the results will be available to the entire research community. With regards to the global broader impacts, the overall goal of improving future predictions of global sea-level rise is of obvious importance to anyone who lives on the coast.