Laurentide Thermal Instability Modeling

该奖项支持芝加哥大学和宾夕法尼亚州立大学的合作建模研究，以开发一套有限单元冰盖模型，研究冰盖在地质记录中观测到的千年尺度气候变化中的作用。研究的主要重点将是了解热不稳定性（即冰川床从冻结状态切换到融化状态）如何导致冰流和冰瓣活动，这些活动与周围环境相互作用强烈，要么作为外部强迫气候变化的放大器，要么作为大气和海洋气候变化的煽动者。模型实验将试图解决关于海因里希事件和邦德/洛蒂事件的原因是这种热触发机制还是格陵兰冰芯记录中看到的气候冷却的争议。

Abstract ATM-9870886 Alley, Richard B. Pennsylvania State University Title: Laurentide Thermal Instability Modeling This award supports collaborative modeling research at the University of Chicago and Pennsylvania State University to develop a suite of finite-element ice-sheet models to study the role of ice sheets in millennial-scale climate change observed in the geologic record. The main focus of the research will be to understand how thermal instability (i.e., switching from frozen to melted conditions at the glacial bed) leads to ice-stream and ice-lobe activity that interacts strongly with the surrounding environment, either as an amplifier to externally forced climate change or as an instigator of climate change in the atmosphere and ocean. Model experiments will attempt to resolve the controversy as to whether the cause of Heinrich events and Bond/Lotti events is this thermal triggering mechanism or is the climate cooling seen in the Greenland ice-core records,