A global, high-resolution data set of ice sheet topography, cavity geometry, and ocean bathymetry

Global Ice Sheet Mapping Observatory

Antarctic Ice Sheet fertilises the Southern Ocean

Southern Ocean (SO) marine primary productivity (PP) is strongly influenced by the availability of iron in surface waters, which is thought to exert a significant control upon atmospheric CO2 concentrations on glacial/interglacial timescales. The zone bordering the Antarctic Ice Sheet exhibits high PP and seasonal plankton blooms in response to light and variations in iron availability. The sou...

Bathymetry from Space: White paper in support of a high-resolution, ocean altimeter mission

Perhaps the most important ocean science observation in the last two decades was provided by the Geosat radar altimeter during its 18-month geodetic mission (1985-86). The declassification of these data in July of 1995 set off a flurry of activity in basic research, industrial research/development, and public interest (Appendix A). While these data fill a huge gap in our understanding of the oc...

Global Warming and the Greenland Ice Sheet

The Greenland coastal temperatures have followed the early 20th century global warming trend. Since 1940, however, the Greenland coastal stations data have undergone predominantly a cooling trend. At the summit of the Greenland ice sheet the summer average temperature has decreased at the rate of 2.2 ◦C per decade since the beginning of the measurements in 1987. This suggests that the Greenland...

Global atmospheric forcing data for Arctic ice-ocean modeling

We compare three forcing data sets, all variants of NCEP forcing, in global ice-ocean simulations and evaluate them for use in Arctic model studies. The data sets include the standard Arctic Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (AOMIP) protocol, standard NCEP forcing fields, and the data set of Large and Yeager (2004). We explore their performance in Arctic simulations using a global, coupled, s...