ICE SHEETS AND GLACIERS IN THE CLIMATE SYSTEM: PART II, DATA-MODEL INTER-COMPARISON

Academic year
2019/2020 Syllabus of previous years
Official course title
ICE SHEETS AND GLACIERS IN THE CLIMATE SYSTEM: PART II, DATA-MODEL INTER-COMPARISON
Course code
PHD092 (AF:325038 AR:170784)
Modality
On campus classes
ECTS credits
3 out of 6 of ICE SHEETS AND GLACIERS IN THE CLIMATE SYSTEM
Degree level
Master di Secondo Livello (DM270)
Educational sector code
GEO/12
Period
2nd Semester
Course year
1
1. Present-day ice sheets and interaction with local, regional, global climate
Present-day state of the Greenland and Antarctica (isostasy, mass balance, sea level)
Gaps in the current knowledge: observation of surface mass balance and basal melting under the cavities
Ice sheets as a tipping point in the climate system: IPCC and beyond

2. Glaciers mass balance

3. Sediment core and palaeoclimate
The need to couple with models to reconstruct the overall basin evolution; seismic horizon mapping and backstripping technique
The Ross Sea and the Wilkes Land margins as key locations to provide data to improve our current knowledge and test the different hypothesis;
The evidence of past ice sheet advance and retreat in the Ross Sea and in the Wilkes Land (geological and geophysical records);
The modern oceanic circulation in the Ross Sea and in the Wilkes Land.
Laboratory (Kingdom applied to seismic data interpretation).

4. Ice cores and palaeoclimate
The ice core records: climate proxies: the water stable isotopes for temperature reconstructions from ice cores
The Present Interglacial (PIG) and the Last Interglacial (LIG) in the ice core records: Data – model comparison.
PAGES2k and the last 2000 years in Antarctica

5. Ice-sheet modelling
Light theory of ice dynamics: main physical assumptions
The hierarchy of ice-sheet models: from SIA to full Stokes models, coupled climate-ice-sheet models, coupled ocean-ice-sheet models
Interactions with ocean: Greenland context and Antarctic context, Marine Ice Sheet Instability

6. Palaeo ice sheets dynamics from models
Northern Hemisphere glaciations: how to simulate past glaciations using sea level, proxies, multibeam etc.
Antarctic past glaciations: the difficulties for ice sheet models

7. Reconstruction of past ice sheet dynamics: models and data exercise
English
oral exam + class exercises
Definitive programme.