Laurentide Thermal Instability Modeling

Investigator: Douglas MacAyeal  (Principal Investigator current)

Abstract

Abstract  ATM-9870886  Alley, Richard B.  Pennsylvania State University  Title: Laurentide Thermal Instability Modeling    This award supports collaborative modeling research at the  University of Chicago and Pennsylvania State University to develop  a suite of finite-element ice-sheet models to study the role of ice  sheets in millennial-scale climate change observed in the geologic record.  The main focus of the research will be to understand how  thermal instability (i.e., switching from frozen to melted  conditions at the  glacial bed) leads to ice-stream and ice-lobe  activity that interacts strongly with the surrounding environment,  either as an amplifier to externally forced climate change or as an  instigator of  climate change in the atmosphere and ocean.  Model  experiments will attempt to resolve the controversy as to whether  the cause of Heinrich events and Bond/Lotti events is this thermal triggering mechanism or is the climate cooling seen in the  Greenland ice-core records,