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Colloquium on glaciers: "Ice sheets: a cartoon: · Thursday, January 23rd, 2020

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Organized by: Kai Schwarz.

Start: Thursday, Jan. 23rd, 4:00 pm

Description:

Not a really a trip but this colloquium might be of interest to some of you. It's on the physics behind ice sheets and is being given by Christian Schoof.

Here's some more information:

From UBC's Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, this week's Departmental Colloquium speaker is an expert on glaciers and other large masses of frozen water:

"Ice sheets: a cartoon", Christian Schoof
4pm, Thursday 23rd January, Hennings 201

We'll learn about the physics of ice sheets, the dynamics of ice, the carving of icebergs and related topics.  And of course their evolution is intimately involved with the subject of climate change.

You can read more about our speaker here:
https://www.eoas.ubc.ca/people/christianschoof

ABSTRACT
Ice sheet simulations have become much more sophisticated over the last decade in their ability to capture small spatial detail and reproduce actual observed ice sheet behaviour. That does not mean that the underlying models are correct. Here we look "under the hood": the purpose of this talk is to present a survey of the physics in ice sheet models and its implications for the dynamics of ice sheets. I strip away much of the sophistication involved to look at the necessary ingredients in minimal continuum models of ice sheet dynamics that are able to capture land- and ocean-terminating ice sheet dynamics, identifying where the major sources of model uncertainty (as opposed to parameter uncertainty) lie, and how different choices of model closure lead to different qualitative dynamics. I will delve into the importance of iceberg calving for the overall dynamics of ice sheets, demonstrating how the response of an ocean-terminating ice sheet is dependent on the choice of calving parameterization, and outline the major difficulties still faced by thermomechanical ice sheet models in capturing the transition in space from a cold bed, where no sliding can occur, to a temperate one, where sliding often dominates the motion of the ice sheet.

UBC's Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences UBC's Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences UBC's Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences

Posted: 2020-01-22 18:47:26