Prof. Mathieu Morlighem, Department of Earth Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA

Title:
The challenges of modeling the ice sheets in a changing climate

Abstract:

Ice sheets are dynamic systems that are among the largest contributors to sea level rise. Observations over the last three decades have shown that the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets have been losing mass at an increasing rate. How the ice sheets respond to the warming of the ocean and the atmosphere has become today one of the most urgent questions in understanding the implications of global climate change. Numerical modeling is the only effective way of addressing this problem. Yet, modeling ice sheet flow at the scale of Antarctica represents many technical challenges, and many important parameters, such as boundary conditions, remain difficult to observe directly and are poorly constrained. In this talk, we discuss some of the recent technical advances made in this field, through the use of high performance computing and inverse modeling. We also show how automatic differentiation tools, such as CoDiPack, are not only helping to better understand the physics of ice sheet flow, but also help to identify the regions that are most at risk of future change in climate conditions and should be closely monitored. These tools will eventually help us better constrain the models over the observational period and reduce the uncertainty in sea level rise projections.

How to join

The talk is held online via Zoom. You can join with the following link:
https://uni-kl-de.zoom.us/j/63565018552?pwd=d2VvMENEN1QvNkhlS01helUwRGhYdz09