Call for Abstracts
Session C 18: Fate of Sea Ice: Interactions With the Atmosphere, Ocean,
and Marine Ecosystems
American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2006 Fall Meeting
11-15 December 2006
San Francisco, California
Abstract Submission Deadlines:
Friday, 1 September 2006 (mail)
Thursday, 7 September 2006 (online)
For further information, please go to:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm06/?content=search&show=detail&sessid=163
You are invited to submit an abstract to the following special session
at this year's American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting:
Session C 18: Fate of Sea Ice: Interactions With the Atmosphere, Ocean,
and Marine Ecosystems
Session Description:
Sea ice is an important component of the global climate system
consisting of five subsystems: the atmosphere, hydrosphere/ocean,
cryosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere. Sea ice variability not only
indicates climate change, but also is directly driven by and feeds back
to the atmosphere, ocean, and hydrological cycle. Therefore, the fate of
sea ice, particularly the diminishing summer sea ice conditions as many
IPCC models project at the end of 21st century, might drastically alter
the cycles of atmosphere, ocean, hydrology, and other components.
Mechanisms and impacts of long-term variability (and trends) of arctic
sea ice are not fully understood, as SEARCH (Study of Environmental
Arctic Change) explores with its driving question "Is the Arctic moving
to a new state?" The European Global Change and Ecosystems Integrated
Project called DAMOCLES (Developing Arctic Modeling and Observing
Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies) and the NSF-sponsored
SIMBA (Sea Ice Mass Budget of the Arctic) workshop are also aimed at
improving our understanding of processes that control the arctic sea ice
mass budget by joint modeling-process study-observation campaigns that
establish an integrated sea ice observation system.
Organizers propose this session to foster discussion of developing an
integrative understanding of the past, current, and possible future
influences of polar sea ice on the climate system in line with
International Polar Year activities. Papers are invited discussing 1)
observational and (both regional and global) modeling studies of the
past climate changes and possible future climate projections related to
the fate of polar sea ice, 2) feedback of sea ice to, and interactions
with, other climate subsystems, 3) the impacts of sea ice variability on
high latitude marine ecosystems, 4) polar atmospheric re-analyses based
on improved sea ice observations and understanding, and 5) inverse
ice-ocean modeling and data assimilation studies and other topics
related to polar sea ice and oceanography.
The goal of this session is to address the following overarching
questions:
1) What is the role and what are impacts of past, current, and possible
future polar sea ice variability (fate) on the polar and global climate
systems?
2) What do available historical data sets and models tell us about the
fate of sea ice under climatic warming scenarios?
Conveners:
Jia Wang
International Arctic Research Center
Phone: 907-474-2685
E-mail: jwang [at] iarc.uaf.edu
Bill D Hibler, III
International Arctic Research Center
Phone: 907-474-7254
E-mail: billh [at] iarc.uaf.edu