Improving Hydrology in Land Ice Models

Abstract

Community Earth System Model Land Ice Working Group Meeting; Boulder, Colorado, 13 January 2011; Recent observations indicate that mass loss from glaciers and ice sheets (“land ice”) is increasing. The drivers of these changes are not well understood, and modeling the land ice response to them remains challenging. As a result, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change explicitly avoided speculating on 21st‐century sea level rise from ice dynamical processes in its fourth assessment report. The mismatch between observations of land ice change and model skill at mimicking those changes is behind recent efforts to develop next‐generation land ice models. Necessary improvements to existing models include improved dynamics, coupling to climate models, and better representations of important boundary conditions and physical processes. Basal sliding, the primary control on the rate of land ice delivery to the oceans, is one such boundary condition that is largely controlled by land ice hydrology.