Collaborative Research: GRate – Integrating data and modeling to quantify rates of Greenland Ice Sheet change, Holocene to future

格陵兰冰盖近年来经历了毁灭性的融化。最近的科学报告强调了格陵兰冰盖对北极气候变化的脆弱性，并描绘了一幅海平面上升影响的可怕图景。为了给社会提供最好的海平面上升预测，以便进行规划，科学家需要提高模拟-或模拟-冰盖对气候变化反应的能力。在这个项目中，来自冰盖研究不同分支的科学家将共同努力，改进冰盖模型。研究人员将利用最近的科学进展对整个格陵兰冰盖进行建模，以调查冰盖对海洋和大气中发生的变化的长期敏感性。研究小组致力于创造一个包容的环境，让所有团队成员都能学习并脱颖而出。该小组包含种族、性别和级别的多样性，并将培训六名早期职业学者，专门从地球科学中代表性较低的群体招聘，地球科学是美国最不多样化的STEM领域之一。结果将公之于众，并将促进未来关于北极系统的广泛研究，包括冰盖建模、模型旋转、古气候重建/合成和冰川历史。为了提升在他们的第一个项目中开发的外展和教育项目的能力，该团队将在他们的“科学家是超级英雄”外展项目的基础上，并利用其他现有的外展框架，包括与格陵兰社区以及与其大学的高中生实习生项目建立联系，这些项目与全国有色人种协进会的青年女性领导力学校(Bronx，NY)和泉谷(NY)分校相关联，由我们敬业的项目教育者和外展专家协调。减少冰盖模型预测的不确定性对社会处理海平面危机至关重要。与冰盖不稳定性有关的不确定性源于有限的观测、对冰盖过程的模型表示不充分以及对大气、海洋和冰盖之间复杂相互作用的有限理解。大气和海洋的强迫如何随时间变化，以及每个强迫快速变化的时间尺度，对于预测未来的冰块质量损失至关重要，但科学家们只观察了很短的一段时间(几十年)的冰盖变化。PIS建议仔细研究从全新世开始(12000年前)到公元2100年的格陵兰冰盖变化，从而有可能评估大气和海洋强迫在十年至百年时间尺度上的不同作用，这与未来格陵兰冰盖的演变有关。PIS将利用他们建立的多学科合作，将冰盖建模、气候强迫和重建过去的冰盖变化结合在一起。这将使研究小组能够对未来冰盖变化做出预测，这些预测基于格陵兰冰盖在我们的现代观测短暂窗口之前发生的过去气候波动期间的行为。这项工作将产生持久的产品，以服务于社区更好地了解冰盖变化的集体努力：1)最先进的冰盖模型，针对长时间尺度的模拟进行优化；2)全新世至现代的一套大气和海洋状态估计，针对强制冰盖模型进行优化；3)过去冰盖配置和古气候记录的数据库，用于模型数据比较。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Greenland Ice Sheet has experienced devastating melt in recent years. Recent scientific reports highlight how vulnerable the Greenland Ice Sheet is to Arctic climate change and draw a dire picture of the impact of sea-level rise. In order to equip society with the best forecasts of sea level rise for planning, scientists need to improve the ability to simulate – or model – the response of ice sheets to climate change. For this project, scientists from different branches of ice-sheet research will work together to improve ice sheet modelling. The researchers will leverage recent scientific advances to model the entire Greenland Ice Sheet in order to investigate long-term ice-sheet sensitivity to changes taking places in the ocean and atmosphere. The research group is committed to creating an inclusive environment where all team members can learn and excel. The team contains diversity in ethnicity, gender and rank, and will train six early career scholars, recruiting specifically from groups underrepresented in the geosciences, which is among the least diverse STEM fields in the U.S. Results will be made publicly available and will facilitate a broad range of future research about the Arctic system, including ice sheet modeling, model spin-up, paleoclimate reconstruction/synthesis and glacier history. To elevate the capacity of outreach and education programs developed during their first project, the team will build on their “Scientists are Superheroes” outreach program and leverage other, existing outreach frameworks, including making connections with Greenlandic communities and with high school student intern programs at their universities linked to The Young Women’s Leadership School (Bronx, NY) and the Spring Valley (NY) branch of the NAACP, coordinated by our dedicated project educator and outreach specialist. Reducing uncertainties in ice-sheet model predictions is crucial in society’s handling of the sea level crisis. Uncertainties related to ice-sheet instability arise from limited observations, inadequate model representation of ice-sheet processes, and limited understanding of the complex interactions between the atmosphere, ocean, and ice sheets. How atmospheric and oceanic forcing vary through time, and at what timescales each are capable of forcing rapid change, are critical for predicting future ice mass loss, but scientists have been observing ice sheet change for only a short period of time (decades). The PIs propose to scrutinize Greenland Ice Sheet change spanning from the beginning of the Holocene (12,000 years ago) to 2100 CE, making it possible to evaluate the varying roles of atmospheric and ocean forcing on decadal-to-centennial timescales relevant for the future Greenland Ice Sheet evolution. The PIs will utilize their established multi-disciplinary collaboration to combine ice sheet modelling, climate forcing and reconstructions of past ice-sheet change. This will position the team to make predictions of future ice sheet change that are grounded in Greenland Ice Sheet behavior during past climate swings that occurred prior to our brief window of modern observation. The work will lead to lasting products to serve the community's collective effort to better understand ice sheet change: 1) a state-of-the-art ice-sheet model optimized for simulations over long timescales, 2) a Holocene-through-modern set of atmospheric and ocean state estimates optimized for forcing an ice-sheet model, and 3) a database of past-ice sheet configurations and paleoclimate records formatted for model-data comparison.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.