Abstract:
Polar ice sheets are one of the largest contributors to sea level rise due to the important release of fresh water into the ocean, either from water runoff (Greenland) and/or calving and melting of ice shelves (Greenland and Antartica). In order to improve projections of future sea level rise in a changing climate, we therefore need to better constrain ice flow models. In particular, large unknowns still remain regarding the ice sheet geometry, especially the bedrock position, which plays such a prominent role in the ice flow equations. Here, we will present some of the ongoing efforts within the JPL/UCI Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM) team to address modeling issues directly arising from such poorly constrained geometries and which have a direct impact on projections of sea level rise. These include among other a push towards combined data assimilation of heterogeneous datasets, better grounding line dynamics, uncertainty quantification and ice/ocean coupling.

This work was performed at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Cryosphere Science Program.

Dr. Eric Larour is the project lead for ISSM (Ice Sheet System Model), the JPL/UCI developed ice sheet flow model. He graduated from Ecole Centrale Paris in 2001, PhD in Mechanical Engineering, and has since then been a Scientific Applications software engineer in the Thermal and Cryogenics Engineering Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory since 2005. He specializes in large scale ice flow models of Antarctica and Greenland, with strong emphasis on data assimilation of satellite data to constrain spin-up of such models.