Collaborative Research: Assessing Drivers of Climate Model Biases on the Pacific Continental Shelf of Antarctica

Oceanographic processes in the Pacific sector of coastal Antarctica exhibit global interactions, including contribution of Antarctic ice-sheets to sea level rise, changes in the Earth's radiative balance, air/sea gas exchange through sea-ice variability, deep water formation, and Southern Ocean biological productivity. Atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (GCMs) are useful tools for understanding the complex interactions between global climate, the Antarctic coastal ocean, the cryosphere (sea ice, ice shelves, and grounded, marine-based ice sheet), and Antarctic ecosystems. Current-generation GCMs exhibit substantial biases in their projections of present-day hydrography and sea ice state. Previous projections of the coastal cryosphere have applied simple bias corrections. However, this approach does not remedy the underlying physical and numerical errors responsible for these biases. This project seeks the relevance of biases to the interpretation of GCM projections by identifying their local and/or remote origins and their variation across regions and with different climate models. It will leverage the wealth of new simulations becoming available through the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, phase 6 (CMIP6), and will focus on the rapidly-changing Pacific sector of the coastal Antarctic. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.