IceAblation – Novel subglacial ocean models to accurately predict Ice-shelf Ablation rates at high resolution and low computational cost

Le projet IceAblation développera de nouveaux modèles sous-glaciaires afin de prédire avec une haute précision et à faible coût les taux d’ablation de la banquise.

La longévité de la banquise en Antarctique est aujourd’hui remise en question : l’océan Austral, auxquelles elle est exposée, transporte de plus en plus de chaleur vers le littoral Antarctique. Afin de prédire le degré d’amincissement ou la potentielle disparition de la banquise, Louis-Alexandre Couston va développer des simulations numériques à haute résolution et des expériences en laboratoire afin de mieux cerner la vitesse de fonte de la glace par un écoulement turbulent. Il mettra aussi au point des techniques d’intelligence artificielle pour trouver comment simuler la dynamique de l’océan sous-glaciaire à bas coût numérique.

Key information / Informations

•    Funding programme / Programme de financement: Horizon Europe - ERC Starting Grant - 2023
•   Coordinator / Coordinateur: Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL), Dr Louis-Alexandre COUSTON (LPENSL)
•   Partners’ list / Liste des partenaires :

o Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENSL)

•   Budget : 1 497 861 €
•   Grant / Subvention : 1 497 861 €
•   Début – Fin : 2024-2029

Context / Contexte

The Antarctic ice sheet state is changing because of anthropogenically-forced climate warming. The flow of grounded ice into polar seas is accelerating, resulting in increasing sea level rise and enhanced freshening of oceans that may change the global ocean circulation. Knowing the rate of change today and under future climate change scenarios is an outstanding challenge of interest to the climate community, policy makers and the public. The main source of uncertainties in Antarctic ice sheet projections comes from the representation of ocean-driven melting and dissolution, i.e., ablation, at the base of ice shelves.
The aim of IceAblation is to enable a step-change in the accuracy of Antarctic ice sheet and sea level rise projections on centennial time scales by developing new and reliable diagnostic models at unprecedented low computational cost.

Objectives / Objectifs

IceAblation objectives are i) building new models of the metre-thick ice-shelf—ocean boundary layer (ISOBL), using innovative laboratory experiments and simulations that will unravel its dynamics ii) building new models to accurately predict ice ablation rates from the grounding line to the shelf front iii) training novel data-driven reduced-order models (ROMs), which will emulate the ocean dynamics at high resolution and unprecedently low computational cost.

Expected impact and results / Impact et résultats attendus

The IceAblation project will improve our understanding and modelling capabilities of the Southern Ocean to improve predictions of sea level rise over the coming centuries. It lies on a holistic approach to the problem of predicting ice-shelf ablation rates accurately and will tackle both knowledge gap of the ocean boundary layer (ISOBL) at metre scale, and the high computational cost of ocean simulation at cavity (hundreds of kilometres) and circumpolar (thousands of kilometres) scales. The project will enable investigations of the ISOBL dynamics at the most extreme turbulence levels observed below ice shelves, which cannot be achieved with simulations, and will offer large ensemble simulations of sub ice-shelf ocean dynamics at high resolution and low computational cost. The resulting subglacial ocean reduced-order models framework will be transferable to other disciplines.

LIP’s contribution / Rôle de LIP

LIP a accompagné le porteur de projet dans toute la phase de montage administratif et financier du projet, conseil à la rédaction. LIP accompagne l’Université Lyon 1 pour le suivi administratif et financier du projet.