DYNAWARM

DYNAWARM seeks to improve our understanding of the climate system in a warmer world by studying thresholds, the processes that govern them, and their behavior in past and future warm climates. Topics of investigation within this multidisciplinary project include:
1. the possibility of thresholds in the response of sea ice, ice sheets and Arctic biota to global warming.
2. characterizing the ocean during past warm periods, in particular the temperature and circulation in the North Atlantic and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation in the tropical Pacific.

The sea ice work package in particular will examine atmosphere-sea ice-upper ocean interactions in the Arctic using a column process model.

Image: An iceberg is conceived. The close up photo taken in Antarctica in October 2011 shows a crack in the Pine Island Glacier 30 km long by 70 km wide and growing wider by 2 m a day. The crack is the precursor an iceberg the size of New York City expected to break loose by the end of 2011/early 2012. Pine Island Glacier has experienced accelerated melting over the last decade because of an increased flow of warm water underneath it, raising concerns of an imminent collapse that could destabilize the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet. (Source: NASA/Digital Mapping System team / Michael Studinger).

More information: DYNAWARM

Duration: 2011-2014

Funding: Ministry of Education and Research, SKD

Contacts:
Camille Li (Project leader)
Bjørg Risebrobakken (Project leader)
Lars Henrik Smedsrud (Work package leader)