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

近年来，格陵兰冰盖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，并描绘了海平面上升的可怕影响。为了使社会能够为规划提供最好的海平面上升预测，科学家需要提高模拟——或建立模型——冰盖对气候变化的反应的能力。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。研究人员将利用最新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和超越。该团队包含种族，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不足的群体中招募，这是美国最不多样化的STEM领域之一。结果将公开提供，并将促进关于北极系统的广泛未来研究，包括冰盖建模，模型旋转，古气候重建/合成和冰川历史。为了提高在第一个项目中开发的外展和教育项目的能力，该团队将以他们的“科学家是超级英雄”外展项目为基础，并利用其他现有的外展框架，包括与格陵兰社区建立联系，以及与青年妇女领导学校（布朗克斯区，纽约州）和全国有色人种协进会（NAACP）春谷分会（纽约州）的大学高中生实习项目建立联系。由我们专门的项目教育家和外展专家协调。减少冰盖模型预测的不确定性对于社会应对海平面危机至关重要。与冰盖不稳定有关的不确定性来自于有限的观测、对冰盖过程的不充分模式表示以及对大气、海洋和冰盖之间复杂相互作用的有限理解。大气和海洋的作用力如何随时间变化，以及在什么时间尺度上各自能够迫使快速变化，对于预测未来的冰质量损失至关重要，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（12,000年前）到2100年的格陵兰冰盖变化，从而有可能在十年到百年的时间尺度上评估与未来格陵兰冰盖演变相关的大气和海洋强迫的不同作用。pi将利用他们建立的多学科合作，将冰盖模型、气候强迫和过去冰盖变化的重建结合起来。这将使研究小组能够以格陵兰冰盖在过去气候波动期间的行为为基础，预测未来的冰盖变化，这些变化发生在我们短暂的现代观测窗口之前。这项工作将产生持久的产品，为社区的集体努力更好地理解冰盖变化提供服务：1)为长时间尺度的模拟优化了最先进的冰盖模型；2)为强制建立冰盖模型而优化了全新世到现代的一套大气和海洋状态估计；3)为模型数据比较格式化了过去冰盖结构和古气候记录的数据库。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.