Main tasks within ice2sea: Involvement in W2, W3 and W4
Description of institution: Utrecht University is the leading research university in the Netherlands and ranks among the top ten universities in Europe. Less than 5% out of 200+ master courses have been awarded the prestige-master label by the university board. One of these is the master course on Meteorology, Physical Oceanography and Climate offered by the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (IMAU). At present, IMAU employs twenty staff members, ten post-doctoral research assistants and about forty PhD students dedicated to the fundamental research of the climate system. The largest research group at IMAU, the Ice and Climate group led by Prof Dr J. Oerlemans, presently employs five staff members, five post-doctoral research assistants and ten PhD students. This group has over two decades of experience in observing and modelling of the cryosphere and polar atmosphere. This includes extensive meteorological experiments on the ice sheets of Greenland, Iceland and Antarctica, mass balance monitoring projects, including the longest undisturbed mass balance record in Greenland (presently 16 years), as well as about 20 automatic weather stations situated on glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, Norway, Switzerland and Antarctica. IMAU was involved in the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) and is partner in the deep ice drilling operation in northern Greenland (NEEM). IMAU is leading the international IPY program on the dynamics of Arctic glaciers (GLACIODYN) and participates in several other IPY initiatives. The regional climate modelling is done in close collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. This successful collaboration now exists for over 10 years has led to numerous publications, recently in Nature Geoscience. KNMI has an excellent support for large computational projects, as has been proven by these previous regional modelling exercises.
Department name: Physics and Astronomy
Staff members: Dr. Michiel R. van den Broeke
Profile of staff member: Dr Michiel R. van den Broeke (1968) is associate professor of meteorology at Utrecht University. He has over fifteen years of experience in polar climate research and has done fieldwork in Greenland, Antarctica, Svalbard and the Alps. Dr. van den Broeke has (co)authored over 80 peer-reviewed papers and acts as scientific editor of The Cryosphere and Antarctic Science, and has previously acted as editor for the Journal of Glaciology. He is member of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology, the Scientific Steering Committee of EPICA and Dutch representative in the SCAR Standing Scientific Group for Physical Sciences.
Selected references:
Rignot, E., J. L. Bamber, M. R. van den Broeke, C. Davis, Y. Li, W. J. van de Berg, E. van Meijgaard, 2008: Recent Antarctic mass loss from radar interferometry and regional climate modeling, Nature Geoscience 2, 106-110.
Van den Broeke, M. R., 2005: Strong melting preceded collapse of Antarctic ice shelf, Geophysical Research Letters 32, doi: 10.1029/2005GL023247.
Van de Berg, W. J., M. R. van den Broeke and E. van Meijgaard, 2006: Reassessment of the Antarctic surface mass balance using calibrated output of a regional atmospheric climate model, Journal of Geophysical Research 111, D11104, doi:10.1029/2005JD006495.
Van den Broeke, M. R., W. J. van de Berg and E. van Meijgaard, 2006: Snowfall in coastal West Antarctica much greater than previously assumed, Geophysical Research Letters 33, L02505, doi:10.1029/2005GL025239.
Other Staff Members: Dr Johannes (Hans) Oerlemans, Dr. R.S.W. van de Wal, University of Utrecht IMAU
Profile of staff member: Johannes (Hans) Oerlemans (1950) is professor of meteorology at Utrecht University. He leads the Ice and Climate research group at IMAU dealing with the interaction between glaciers, climate and sea level. He contributed to various IPCC reports. In the framework of IPY, he is coordinating an international research program on arctic glaciers (GLACIODYN). In 2001 Oerlemans received the Spinoza-award from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research and in 2004 the Physics Price of the Netherlands’ Physical Society. In 2007 he was bestowed with an honorary doctorate at Stockholm University and in 2008 he received the Louis Agassiz Medal of the European geosciences Union.
Selected references:
Oerlemans, J. M. Dyurgerov and R. S. W. van de Wal, 2007: Reconstructing the glacier contribution to sea-level rise back to 1850. The Cryosphere 1, 59-65.
Oerlemans, J., R. P. Bassford, W. Chapman, J. A. Dowdeswell, A. F. Glazovsky, J.-O. Hagen, K. Melvold, M. de Ruyter de Wildt and R. S. W. van de Wal (2005): Estimating the contribution from Arctic glaciers to sea-level change in the next 100 years. Annals of Glaciology 42, 230-236.
Oerlemans, J., 2005: Extracting a climate signal from 169 glacier records. Science 308, 675-677; 10.1126/science.1107046.
Profile of Staff member: Dr. R.S.W. van de Wal is an Associate professor in glaciology and paleoclimatology, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric research Utrecht, Utrecht University. (Co-)author of more than 75 peer reviewed papers, member of several national and international committees. Expertise in ice sheet modelling, contribution of small glaciers to sea level rise and mass balance modelling and observations of the Greenland ice sheet. Field work experience in Greenland, Svalbard, Sweden, Austria.
Selected references:
Bintanja R., R. S. W. van de Wal and J. Oerlemans (2005). Modelled atmospheric temperatures and global sea level over the past million years. Nature, 437, doi:10.1038/nature03975.
Bintanja R., and R. S. W. van de Wal. A three million-year history of Northern Hemisphere glaciation. Submitted Nature
Meehl, G A, T F Stocker, W D Collins, P Friedlingstein, A T Gaye, J M Gregory, A Kitoh, R Knutti, J M Murphy, A Noda, S C B Raper, I G Watterson, A J Weaver, A Z C Zhao. Global Climate Projections. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Solomon S, D Qin, M Manning, Z Chen , M Marquis, K B Averyt, M Tignor and H L Milner (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. (contributing author R. S. W. van de Wal).
Oerlemans J, M Duyrgerov, R. S. W. van de Wal 2007. Reconstructing the glacier contribution to sea-level rise back to 1850. The Cryosphere, 1, 59-65.
Van de Wal, R. S. W. (1999). The importance of thermodynamics for modelling the volume of the Greenland ice sheet. Journal of Geophysical Research,104(D4), 3887-3898.
Van de Wal, R. S. W. Greenland Mass balance modelling (2004). In Mass balance of the cryosphere: observations and modelling of contemporary and future changes. Eds. J. Bamber and T. Payne.
Van de Wal, R. S. W. and M. Wild (2001). Modelling the response of glaciers to climate change, applying volume-area scaling in combination with a high resolution GCM. Climate Dynamics, 18, 359-366.
Van de Wal, R. S. W., W Greuell, M R van den Broeke, C H Reijmer and J Oerlemans 2006. Surface mass-balance observations and automatic weather station data along a transect near Kangerlussuaq, West Greenland. Annals of Glaciology, 42, 311-316.
Van den Berg, J., R. S. W. van de Wal and J. Oerlemans 2006. Recovering lateral variations in lithospheric strength from bedrock motion data using a coupled ice sheet-lithosphere model. Journal of Geophysical Research, 11, B05409, doi:10.1029/2005JB003790.
Van den Berg, J., R. S. W. van de Wal and J Oerlemans 2006. Effects of spatial discretisation in ice sheet modelling. Journal of Glaciology, 52( 176), 89-98.
