Main tasks within ice2sea: Workpackage coordination (W5, W6), involvement in W3, W5, W6
Description of institution: The Bristol Glaciology Centre (BGC) is a designated University of Bristol Research Centre, and part of the School of Geographical Sciences. The BGC has world-class expertise in two main areas of glaciology. First, ice sheet processes dealing with the measurement and modelling of large ice sheets, such as in Greenland and Antarctica, and assessing how they interact with, and change, global climate both now and in the past. Second, subglacial environments concerning the exploration of the underside of ice sheets and glaciers, such as Antarctic subglacial lakes, investigating the biogeochemical processes which occur there, and assessing the records of past climate change that accumulate in these environments. BGC has a lengthy record in the development of models of ice sheets and remote sensing of ice masses, which has been funded primarily through grants from the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
Department name: Bristol Glaciology Centre, School of Geographical Sciences
Staff member: Prof. Antony J. Payne
Profile of staff member: Tony Payne is a Professor of Glaciology in Bristol and co-director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM), a NERC Earth Observation Centre of Excellence. He was a contributing author on ice-sheet modelling for the 3rd (2001) and 4th (2007) Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Since 1997, he has been awarded a total seven NERC non-thematic standard grants (5 as P.I. and 2 as Co-I.), and four thematic programme grants (ARCICE, RAPID, QUEST and e-science). He was deeply involved in the European Science Foundation’s Ice Sheet Model Inter-comparison exercise, and has been a member of the International Council of the International Glaciological Society since 2003. He recently organized a Royal Society discussion meeting on the “Evolution of the Antarctic ice sheet: new understanding and challenges” and was chief editor for the associated volume of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (2006).
Staff member: Prof. Jonathan L. Bamber
Profile of staff member: Jonathan Bamber is an expert in the application of remote sensing to ice sheets, and has experience in the application of mass balance modelling to the Greenland ice sheet. In the last ten years he has published papers on the mass balance of Antarctica, Greenland, Svalbard and Patagonia and is one of very few scientists internationally who has worked directly on all the remote sensing techniques available for determining ice mass balance, which include laser and radar altimetry, SAR interferometry and GRACE/gravity measurements. For the last three years he has been working with partners in the Netherlands, Norway and USA on measuring and modelling the past mass balance of Greenland and Antarctica.
Selected references:
Bamber, J. L., R. B. Alley, and I. Joughin (2007) Rapid response of modern day ice sheets to external forcing, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 257, 1-13.
Bougamont, M., J. L. Bamber, J. K. Ridley, R. M. Gladstone, W. Greuell, E. Hanna, A. J. Payne, and I. Rutt (2007), Impact of model physics on estimating the surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet, Geophysical Research Letters 34, L17501, doi:10.1029/2007GL030700.
Joughin, I., Bamber, J.L., 2005. Thickening of the Ice Stream Catchments Feeding the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, Antarctica, Geophysical Research Letters 32, L17503, doi:10.1029/2005GL023844
Payne, A.J., A. Vieli, A. Shepherd, D.J. Wingham and E. Rignot (2004) Recent dramatic thinning of largest West-Antarctic ice stream triggered by oceans, Geophysical Research Letters 31, L23401.
Payne, A.J., P.R. Holland, A.P. Shepherd, I.C. Rutt, A. Jenkins, and I. Joughin (2007) Numerical modelling of ocean-ice interactions under Pine Island Bay’s ice shelf, Journal of Geophysical Research 112, C10019, doi:10.1029/ 2006JC003733.
Rignot, E., , J. L. Bamber, M. R. van den Broeke, C. Davis, Y. Li, W.J. van de Berg, and E. van Meijgaard (2008) Recent Antarctic ice mass loss from radar interferometry and regional climate modelling, Nature Geosci., doi:10.1038/ngeo102.
Vieli, A., and A.J. Payne (2005) Assessing the ability of numerical ice sheet models to simulate grounding line migration, Journal of Geophysical Research 110, F01003.
