Rapid changes during the glacial transitions
(Leader: Lev Tarasov, lev@mun.ca )
1. Need for the International Focus Group
Rapid changes in earth system components have potentially high impacts on society and the environment. Such changes generally involve non-linear interactions across scales and are therefore poorly resolved even in our best models. Poor conceptual and model resolution along with low prevalence in the observational and paleo record imply such changes constitute one of the most uncertain aspects of climate and earth system change.
As a relevant example, the stability of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have become a major societal as well as scientific concern. An associated major pathway for rapid climate change is meltwater induced changes in ocean circulation and sea-ice extent, as inferred from the paleo record. Therefore rapid changes offer a critical test of our understanding and modelling capability of ice sheet and climate dynamics especially at high latitudes, where climate change is expected to be most significant. 2. Goals and objectives
The Focus Group exists to stimulate and promote research on topics related to interactions between ice and climate, with a focus on rapid changes during the last glacial cycle. A key emphasis is to bring together both modellers and field specialists in all relevant areas (including paleoclimatology, paleo-oceanography, glaciology and glacial geology/geomorphology).
The work of this Focus group is largely through the joint TERPRO-PALCOMM Meltwater routing and Ocean-Cryosphere-Atmosphere response (MOCA) project and associated partners.
This project has two main goals :
The principal goal is to establish a constrained regional meltwater and iceberg discharge chronologyfor all major ice-sheets during the last deglaciation with well-defined error bars. The consequent long-term goal is to establish a good conceptual understanding of the interactions between the cryosphere, ocean, and atmosphere associated with this chronology.
The specific objectives of MOCA for the new inter-congress interval are:
1. Jointly assess existing terrestrial and marine records for deglacial ice-sheet extent and meltwater floods and paleo-oceanographic records for the Arctic North Atlantic.
2. Refine ice margin chronologies (including max/min bounds for each time-slice) for both the Eurasian and North American ice complexes and assemble available constraints for the data-poorer Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets..
3. Refine deglacial ice (thickness and velocity bounds) and meltwater chronologies for the Northern Hemispheric and Southern Hemispheric ice-sheets through calibrated modelling using both terrestrial and oceanographic records as constraints
4. Evaluate the relative roles of dynamic (punctuated) ice streaming versus steady meltwater runoff and proglacial lake drainage.
5. Evaluate the climatic processes associated with past meltwater and iceberg discharges through both modeling and comparison against relevant pale-oceanographic and terrestrial data
6. Examine pre-LGM glacial chronologies where warranted given available data and incorporate relevant data-constraints into the calibrated modelling.
7.Continue to forge the interdisciplinary links between the glaciological, Quaternary terrestrial, pale-oceanographic, and climate modeling communities that are required to adequately decipher and understand past Earth and climate system dynamics especially in the context of mid-high latitude regions and abrupt climate change.
3. Initial correspondents, including
the leader, together with a statement that those named are prepared to serve
Presently there are no separate correspondents for this IFG
as current efforts are embodied within the MOCA project (Meltwater routing
and Ocean-Cryosphere-Atmosphere response).
3.1.
Leader
The leader for the IFG is (who is to prepared to serve):
Dr. Lev Tarasov
Dept of Physics and Physical Oceanography,
Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador,
CANADA.
E-mail: lev@mun.ca
http://www.physics.mun.ca/~lev/
Tel (709)-864-2675
Fax (709)-864-8739
3.2. Co-Leaders:
Dr. Thomas M. Cronin,
US Geological Survey, National Center, Reston, USA
E-mail: tcronin@usgs.gov
Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, NORWAY
E-mail: trond.dokken@bjerknes.uib.no Dr. Richard Gyllencreutz
Stockholm University, SWEDEN
E-mail: richard.gyllencreutz@geo.su.se Dr. Hans Renssen
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, HOLLAND
E-mail: hans.renssen@falw.vu.nl Dr. David Roberts
Durham University, Durham, UK
E-mail: d.h.roberts@durham.ac.uk Dr. Didier Roche
INSU-CNRS, Paris, FRANCE
E-mail: didier.roche@vu.nl Dr. Chris Stokes
Durham University, UK
E-mail: c.r.stokes@durham.ac.uk
3.3. MOCA correspondents and workshop participants (early career or student are bold-faced)
CANADA: Jan Bednarski (GSC), Trevor Bell (Mem. U. of Newfoundland), Andre Blais-Stevens (GSC), Robert Briggs (Mem. U. of Newfoundland), Art Dyke (GSC), John Gosse (Dalhousie U.), Daniel Kerr(GSC), Claude Hillaire-Marcel (UQAM), Isabelle McMartin (GSC), Michel Parent (GSC), W. R. Peltier (U. Toronto), David Piper (GSC), Francky Saint-Ange (GSC), John Shaw (GSC), Jim Teller (U. Manitoba), Brian Todd (GSC), Anne de Vernal (UQAM)
FRANCE: Masa Kageyama(LSCE), Gerhard Krinner(LGGE), Catherine Ritz(LGGE)
GERMANY: Henning Bauch(IFM-GEOMAR), Gerrit Lohman(AWI), Birgit Schneider(Kiel U.), Robert Spielhagen(IFM-GEOMAR)
NEW ZEALAND: Andrew Mackintosh (Victoria U.)
NORWAY: Jo Brendryen, Oystein Lohne, Jan Mangerud, John Inge Svendsen (all U. of Bergen)
JAPAN: Ayako Abe-Ouchi (U. of Tokyo)
SPAIN: Volker Rath, Alexander Robinson (both at Ciudad U.)
SWEDEN: Jenny Brandefelt (KTH), Claes Hattestrand, Martin Jakobsson, Krister Jansson, Nina Kirchner, Johan Kleman, Martin Margold, Arjen Stroeven (all at Stockholm U. except for J. B.)
UNITED KINGDOM: Grant Bigg (U. Sheffield), Michael J. Bentley (Durham U.), Stephen J. Livingstone (U. Sheffield), Antony Long (Durham U.), Julian Murton (U. Sussex), Pippa Whitehouse (Durham U.)
USA : John T Andrews (U. Colorado), Patrick Applegate
(PennState), Tim Fisher (U. Toledo), Anne Jennings (U. Colorado), Tom Lowell
(U. Cincinnati), Bette Otto-Bliesner (NCAR), Dorothy Peteet (NASA GISS),
Leonid Polyak (Byrd Polar)
