Can we (re)construct the past and future extent of ice shelves? Observations and Models

The Past Antarctic Ice Sheet Dynamics (PAIS) Conference 2017, organized by the OGS – Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale, will be held in Trieste (Italy), from the 10th to the 15th of September, 2017.

During this conference, CMCC Foundation has organized a workshop entitled “Can we (re)construct the past and future extent of ice shelves? Observations and Models”.

The speakers will be:

  • Florence Colleoni Centro euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC), Bologna, Italy
  • Paolo Stocchi – Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) , Den Burg, Texel, Netherlands
  • Laura De Santis – Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS), Trieste, Italy
  • Fabio Florindo – Istituto Nazionale di Geofisia e Vulcanologia (INGV), Rome, Italy

The workshop is cross-disciplinary and intends to discuss dynamical aspects of past ice-ocean-atmosphere-continental margins interactions of the Antarctic ice shelves and how to use this knowledge to project their future evolution.

Unlike Greenland, Antarctica has long climate history and started to glaciate under highly different climate conditions and similar to higher atmospheric CO2 concentration. It focuses on ice shelves because they reflect the status of Antarctica: on-going climate change induce a thinning of most of the current ice shelves around Antarctica; recent projections suggest a partial (total) collapse of the major ice shelves by 2100 (2500); some of the Southern Ocean marine sediment records reflect the ice shelves expansion and retreat from deep past to the last millenium; reflection seismic profiles reveal the past position of the grounding line.

Numerous scientific gaps still exist in the knowledge of the physical processes related to the ice shelves dynamics. The challenges are many: Do climate proxies reflect mean states or extreme events? Can we define the mean state of Antarctica during past periods (Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, past interglacials)? Should we tune the models to past warm periods? What is the impact of short-term processes on the past dynamics of the ice sheet? We hope to discuss those questions and define some possibile future directions for the next PAIS program.

The talks from invitied speakers will be broadcast via GoToMeeting during the Conference:
http://www.scar.org/srp/pais

 

When and Where

Trieste, Italy, Saturnia Room - Saturnia Room, Trieste, Italy -

13 Sep 2017



Contacts

Main contact for info: [email protected]

Website Organized by
  • CMCC - Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici

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