The Southern Ocean Freshwater Input from Antarctica (SOFIA) Initiative: scientific objectives and experimental design
Name
gmd-16-7289-2023.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.34 MB
Format
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Checksum (MD5)
35688e37e39b87e47f1505e5e0820570
Author(s)
Swart, Neil C
Martin, Torge
Beadling, Rebecca
Chen, Jia-Jia
Danek, Christopher
England, Matthew H
Farneti, Riccardo
Griffies, Stephen M
Hattermann, Tore
Hauck, Judith
Date Issued
December 19, 2023
Journal
Geoscientific Model Development
Publisher
Copernicus GmbH
Citation
Swart, N. C., Martin, T., Beadling, R., Chen, J.-J., Danek, C., England, M. H., Farneti, R., Griffies, S. M., Hattermann, T., Hauck, J., Haumann, F. A., Jüling, A., Li, Q., Marshall, J., Muilwijk, M., Pauling, A. G., Purich, A., Smith, I. J., and Thomas, M.: The Southern Ocean Freshwater Input from Antarctica (SOFIA) Initiative: scientific objectives and experimental design, Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 7289–7309.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
As the climate warms, the grounded ice sheet and floating ice shelves surrounding Antarctica are melting and releasing additional freshwater into the Southern Ocean. Nonetheless, almost all existing coupled climate models have fixed ice sheets and lack the physics required to represent the dominant sources of Antarctic melt. These missing ice dynamics represent a key uncertainty that is typically unaccounted for in current global climate change projections. Previous modelling studies that have imposed additional Antarctic meltwater have demonstrated regional impacts on Southern Ocean stratification, circulation, and sea ice, as well as remote changes in atmospheric circulation, tropical precipitation, and global temperature. However, these previous studies have used widely varying rates of freshwater forcing, have been conducted using different climate models and configurations, and have reached differing conclusions on the magnitude of meltwater–climate feedbacks. The Southern Ocean Freshwater Input from Antarctica (SOFIA) initiative brings together a team of scientists to quantify the climate system response to Antarctic meltwater input along with key aspects of the uncertainty. In this paper, we summarize the state of knowledge on meltwater discharge from the Antarctic ice sheet and ice shelves to the Southern Ocean and explain the scientific objectives of our initiative. We propose a series of coupled and ocean–sea ice model experiments, including idealized meltwater experiments, historical experiments with observationally consistent meltwater input, and future scenarios driven by meltwater inputs derived from stand-alone ice sheet models. Through coordinating a multi-model ensemble of simulations using a common experimental design, open data archiving, and facilitating scientific collaboration, SOFIA aims to move the community toward better constraining our understanding of the climate system response to Antarctic melt.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-7289-2023
