Collaborative Research: Bipolar Coupling of late Quaternary Ice Sheet Variability (award #1341311)

This award supports a project to study the physical processes that synchronize glacial-scale variability between the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets and the Antarctic ice-sheet. Using a coupled numerical ice-sheet earth-system model, the research team will explore the cryospheric responses to past changes in greenhouse gas concentrations and variations in earth's orbit and tilt. As part of the effort climate (Friedrich et al., 2016; Sci. Adv.) and Antarctic ice sheet simulations (Tigchelaar et al., 2018; EPSL) of the last 800 ka were conducted with the climate model LOVECLIM and the ice sheet model PSUIM. Forced by these climatologies, human dispersal was simulated over the past 125 thousand years (Timmermann and Friedrich, 2016; Nature).

The 784 ka transient Antarctic ice-sheet model simulation data generated in this project have been archived in CF compliant NetCDF format. The IBS Center for Climate Physics ICCP data servers (http://climatedata.ibs.re.kr/grav/ ) hosts the data using client software in format-independent (OPeNDAP) format. All geospatial metadata are FGDC compliant.

We use a transient, three-dimensional climate simulation covering the last eight glacial cycles to drive the Penn State Antarctic ice sheet model. For the climate simulation, we use the intermediate complexity Earth system model LOVECLIM, which was forced with time-evolving orbital parameters, greenhouse gas concentrations, and northern hemisphere ice sheet volume.

Note: This model used a polar stereographic grid. To facillitate analysis using GRaDS we regridded the data for the GrADS OPeNDAP server. Regridding was done using CDO Bilinear Grid Interpolation.