International Symposium on Sea Ice in a Changing Environment

The International Glaciological Society will hold an International Symposium on Sea Ice in a Changing Environment in 2014. The symposium will be held in Hobart, Australia from 10 to 14 March 2014. This will be the fourth IGS symposium dedicated to sea-ice research.

Topics are to include:

• Pole to pole: Large-scale change and variability in sea ice and climate, including: regional to hemispheric response, teleconnections, attribution of change (including large-scale atmospheric and oceanic circulation changes and feedback mechanisms), and possible extreme events
• Seymour Laxon and Katharine Giles celebration session: Advances in sea- ice analysis using remotely sensed data, including: hemispheric and global assessment, sea-ice thickness and volume, algorithm development and validation, accuracy of retrieved parameters, multisensor synergies, new technologies
• Advances in instrumentation and observation methods, including: non-destructive observations, autonomous observatories (including underwater and aerial platforms), new analytical methods
• The challenge of melding sea-ice modelling with observations, including: sea-ice and coupled model validation, advances in numerical parameterizations, current gaps, translating observations into models, IPCC-AR5 ensemble synthesis
• A new regime for sea-ice growth and decay?, including: New observations of sea-ice growth and decay processes and of the characteristics of the sea-ice matrix, including the contribution of snow to sea-ice formation and decay (e.g. snow–ice and melt-pond formation), microphysical properties
• Snow on sea ice, including: snow thickness, density, characteristics and processes, gas exchange, surface radiation budget and remote sensing considerations
• Interactions between sea-ice drift & deformation and sea-ice morphology, including: ice kinematics, dynamics and mechanics, linkage to floe-size distribution and ice concentration, and dynamic effects on the sea-ice matrix
• Ocean–ice–atmosphere interactions, including: boundary-layer processes, waves, tides, drag coefficients, synoptic scale forcing
• The marginal ice zone, including: processes at the outer ice–ocean boundary, numerical and experimental advances in wave–ice interaction, wave attenuation, and floe-size modification
• Sea-ice interaction with ice sheets, ice shelves and icebergs, including: fast ice, polynyas, basal melt and refreeze, water-mass modification, freshwater balance, oceanic heat content, and possible linkage to ice-shelf stability
• The role of sea ice in ecosystems dynamics, including: sea-ice biota, primary productivity, microorganisms, microbial food webs, trophic levels
• Sea-ice biogeochemical properties and processes in a world of change, including: gas fluxes, nutrients, trace elements, carbon and oxygen cycling, brine composition and nutrients
• Palaeo and pre-satellite sea ice distribution, including: historical records and observations, reconstructions from ice core records and deep-sea sediments.

Information will be updated on the conference website as it becomes available.