OCEAN:ICE

Ocean-Cryosphere Exchanges in ANtarctica: Impacts on Climate and the Earth System

OCEAN:ICE is a new Horizon Europe project, funded by the European Commission and UKRI. The project will start on the 1st November 2022 and will run for 4 years until 31st October 2026.

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OCEAN:ICE is an exciting new project that will push forward the boundaries in our understanding of how the Antarctic ice sheet and surrounding Southern Ocean influences our global climate, as well as reduce the dangerous levels of uncertainty around how much it will melt in the coming centuries. Many past and present projects focus on single elements of this question; ocean circulation, ice sheet change and tipping points. OCEAN:ICE will bring these aspects together and consider the important role of feedbacks between them and the global climate. It will combine both observational and modelling approaches to improve our understanding of fundamental ice-ocean interactions and our ability to model them, as well as rigorous approaches to quantifying our present uncertainty in predictions of future change. Bringing together 17 centres from across the EU and UK, was well as numerous partner nations and organisations, it will produce several key outcome including: An improved estimate of Antarctic Ice Sheet melt over the last 40 years, with contributions from surface runoff, basal melt and iceberg calving; Numerically robust uncertainty estimates on projections of these freshwater flows into the ocean to the year 2300 and; The first estimates of the role of coupled feedbacks between the ice sheet and global climate on future warming and sea level rise projections and the potential for Antarctic or Southern Ocean climate ‘tipping points’. OCEAN:ICE includes a strong outreach component to ensure that its findings contribute both to international scientific assessments such as the IPCC, as well as are communicated to the public and policymakers.

Specific OCEAN:ICE objectives are to:

Objective 1

Reduce the spatial and knowledge gaps in ocean observations around Antarctica, particularly relating to ice sheet-ocean interaction and deep water formation and export. This will assess the oceanic controls on heat and freshwater delivery to and from ‘cold’ (e.g. Weddell Sea) as well as ‘warm’ (Amundsen Sea) sites of ice sheet-ocean interaction around Antarctica, and the processes that control mixing, water mass formation and export over the continental shelves and subpolar basins.

Objective 2

Improve critical ice sheet-ocean processes in numerical models, using historical observations and new data sets obtained in the project. Particularly under warm and cold ice shelves and around grounded icebergs, including vertical/horizontal mixing, ocean heat delivery, iceberg interactions with sea-ice and bathymetry and basal melt. Implement these improvements in coupled ice sheet-ocean and ice sheet-climate models.

Objective 3

Improve representation of AIS dynamics and integrate this knowledge into ice sheet and coupled ice sheet-climate models. By using new and existing datasets to improve ice sheet model initialisation and quantifying the uncertainty in present day freshwater fluxes from Antarctica due to climate variability, dynamical processes (calving, ice flow) and surface/basal mass balance (surface runoff, basal melt).

Objective 4

Quantify AIS melt sensitivity to climate forcing and reduce the ‘deep uncertainty’ in freshwater flux and SLR projections to 2300. By combining newly developed coupled ice sheet-ocean models with innovative quantification of uncertainty and improved initialisation setups. This will produce projections of the contributions by basal meltwater, iceberg calving and surface runoff for a range of future climate scenarios, including tipping points.

Objective 5

Assess how global ocean circulation is impacted by freshwater discharge from the northern and southern ice sheets. Map the pathways and variability of Antarctic Bottom Water as it spreads north. Assess how this and other freshwater input modifies climatically relevant ocean features such as North Atlantic Deep Water formation, the deep overturning circulation, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) and AMOC up to millennial timescales.

Objective 6

Assess the ocean impact on, and feedbacks between, key global climate metrics (e.g. SLR, global mean surface temperature) and polar ice sheet melt to 2300 and beyond. This will be achieved by combining the improved melt scenarios, initialisation and model parameterisations, notably the representation of icebergs and ice shelf processes, within coupled ice sheet-climate models. It will establish the impact and likelihood of ice sheet melt scenarios, including passing tipping points, and global consequences such as SRL and AMOC state change.

Objective 7

Deliver free and open access to all data obtained in the project and contribute to international assessments (e.g. IPCC), climate model development, multi-national ocean observing initiatives (e.g. SOOS, All-Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance) and policymakers. Data consolidation and delivery will be achieved through close integration with SOOS, EMODnet and Copernicus data delivery services and will follow FAIR principles and be INSPIRE compliant. Direct partnership with SOOS, SAMOC, EPB, EU Polar Cluster, EU-Polarnet 2, and other European and international programmes, as well as the high-level involvement of investigators in international science coordination, climate assessment and policy bodies will maximise the reach and impact of OCEAN:ICE.

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