Call for Papers
American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2005 Fall Meeting
Session C 12: "Sea Ice Feedbacks and Climate Change"
5-9 December 2005
San Francisco, California
Abstract Submissions Open: Tuesday, 26 July 2005
Abstract Submission Deadline: Thursday, 8 September 2005
For further information on the AGU 2005 Fall Meeting, please go to:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm05/
Dear Colleague,
We would like to draw your attention to the following special session at
this year's AGU Fall Meeting:
C 12: "Sea Ice Feedbacks and Climate Change"
Session Description:
In recent years, the dramatic retreat of summertime sea ice extent,
culminating in the record arctic sea ice minima of 2002 and 2003 and the
remarkable reduction in sea ice thickness, has introduced ideas of a
"tipping point" beyond which the marine cryosphere cannot quickly
recover. Where sea ice once reduced air-sea fluxes, an expanse of open
water now interacts with a changing polar atmosphere, giving rise to
increased cloud cover and aerosol production. These atmospheric elements
may serve to either accelerate or retard further ice melt through a
series of ice-albedo feedbacks. Whether these complex radiative,
turbulent, and biogeochemical interactions will lead to an ice-free
arctic by summer 2050 or promote re-freeze along the circum-arctic
shelves is currently unknown. Even greater uncertainty clouds our
understanding of similar mechanisms in the Southern Ocean, where the
seasonal retreat of sea ice provides few clues to the sensitivity of the
system to feedback mechanisms. The consequences of missing or incorrect
representation of these feedbacks in coupled ocean-ice-atmosphere models
can be profound, impacting the range of modeling efforts from research
into processes to simulating the climate and forecasting change. The
session invites contributions that cover all aspects of the feedback
processes involving changes in sea ice cover in the polar
regions.
Conveners:
Peter Minnett and Erica Key
University of Miami
Meteorology and Physical Oceanography
Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science
4600 Rickenbacker Causeway
Miami, FL 33149
Phone: 305-421-4104 and 305-421-4657
E-mail: pminnett [at] rsmas.miami.edu and ekey [at] rsmas.miami.edu