9:00 AM - 9:15 AM
[MIS10-01] Global Antarctic Science: connecting the chain of changing huge ice sheet and global environments
★Invited Papers
Keywords:Antarctica, ice sheet instability, atmospheric river, sea level change
The Antarctic Ice Sheet has been losing its mass in recent years, and there are growing concerns of rapid sea level rise, due to ice sheet instabilities, will exceed a tipping point. At the same time, increased water vapor, transported by warmer atmosphere, will counteract the mass loss in the warming climate. Understanding the balance between the accelerating ice sheet discharge and increasing recharge is the key to accurately predicting the ice mass budget and hence sea level changes. Each component is determined by local dynamics and the global atmosphere-ocean-snow-ice-solid Earth interaction. However, there are still large gaps in our understanding of these processes from the past to present, and there is high uncertainty in predicting the future. The effects of ice sheet melting will not only cause sea level rise, but also major changes of global tipping elements through interactions among the atmosphere, ocean, and greenhouse gas content. These issues must be addressed immediately.
We thus propose a new research framework to link the Antarctic Ice Sheet with the global environment. We will use cutting-edge in-situ observations and high-resolution numerical modeling conducted over a wide area from the ice sheet to the ocean to investigate the flow process of warm circumpolar deep water originating from mid-low latitudes and the Northern Hemisphere onto the continental shelf. We will elucidate the mechanism behind the ongoing discharge of the Antarctic Ice Sheet by examining the drivers of its fluctuations, the mechanism of rapid ice shelf collapse, atmospheric river, and global teleconnections. In parallel, we will reconstruct the past changes in the Antarctic Ice Sheet associated with past glacial-interglacial cycles by collecting and analyzing ice and marine sediment cores etc. from a wide area centered on the Antarctic Ice Sheet with advanced technologies. Through numerical modeling approach ranging from regional to global coupled atmosphere-ocean models over tens of thousands of years, we will clarify the causes of East Antarctic Ice Sheet changes under different climate conditions than the present, especially during the past warm periods. We will promote interdisciplinary collaborations that share the above knowledge across these multiple fields, and explore global-scale interactions among climate elements from ice sheets to the atmosphere and oceans, and from the past to the present.
Our research framework focuses on connecting changes in the Antarctic Ice Sheet from a global perspective, which has not been fully understood to date, and examines the effects of the global environmental system on a time scale from tens of thousands of years in the past to the near future. We aim to establish a new research area called "Global Antarctic Science" that will contribute to developments in global climate and environmental science and to social wellbeing.
We thus propose a new research framework to link the Antarctic Ice Sheet with the global environment. We will use cutting-edge in-situ observations and high-resolution numerical modeling conducted over a wide area from the ice sheet to the ocean to investigate the flow process of warm circumpolar deep water originating from mid-low latitudes and the Northern Hemisphere onto the continental shelf. We will elucidate the mechanism behind the ongoing discharge of the Antarctic Ice Sheet by examining the drivers of its fluctuations, the mechanism of rapid ice shelf collapse, atmospheric river, and global teleconnections. In parallel, we will reconstruct the past changes in the Antarctic Ice Sheet associated with past glacial-interglacial cycles by collecting and analyzing ice and marine sediment cores etc. from a wide area centered on the Antarctic Ice Sheet with advanced technologies. Through numerical modeling approach ranging from regional to global coupled atmosphere-ocean models over tens of thousands of years, we will clarify the causes of East Antarctic Ice Sheet changes under different climate conditions than the present, especially during the past warm periods. We will promote interdisciplinary collaborations that share the above knowledge across these multiple fields, and explore global-scale interactions among climate elements from ice sheets to the atmosphere and oceans, and from the past to the present.
Our research framework focuses on connecting changes in the Antarctic Ice Sheet from a global perspective, which has not been fully understood to date, and examines the effects of the global environmental system on a time scale from tens of thousands of years in the past to the near future. We aim to establish a new research area called "Global Antarctic Science" that will contribute to developments in global climate and environmental science and to social wellbeing.