Workshop on observing and modelling meltwater retention processes in snow and firn on ice sheets and glaciers

Hosted by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS)

1-3 June 2016, Øster Voldgade 10, DK-1350 Copenhagen

Sponsorship: Danish Council for Independent Research (DFF)

and International Arctic Scientific Committee (IASC) co-sponsored

 

Practical items:

• What will the workshop include:
  • Icebreaker on Wednesday
  • Morning and afternoon coffee breaks.
  • Lunch Thursday and Friday.
  • Workshop dinner on Thursday (Please let me know, if you plan NOT to attend)
• Poster session: Thursday afternoon. Please use the prepared poster holders in the hallway
• Discussion sessions: discuss observations and model development of meltwater retention processes in snow and firn.
• Please be on time for each session as the main entrance to GEUS will be locked most of the time during the workshop.

 

Need help?:

• Robert work phone: Call +4591333838
• Robert private phone: Call or text +4525132694

Publication:

We plan a special issue on the workshop topic in Frontiers in Earth Sciences – Cryospheric sciences [link].

 

 

Program

Oral presentations

Wednesday 1 June		Title
12.00-13.00	Registration
Convener: Jason Box
13.00-13.10	Introduction
13.10-13.40	W. Tad Pfeffer	The little problem that won’t go away: 50+ years of research on Greenland meltwater infiltration
13.40-14.10	Roger Braithwaite	Measurement and modelling of meltwater retention on ice sheets and glaciers
14.10-14.30	Carl E. Bøggild	Melt water in cold polar snow: a system of observational, understanding and modeling challenges
14.30-14.40	Dirk van As	Expert Survey
Break
Convener: Dirk van As
15.00-15.20	Richard Forster	Greenland firn aquifer investigations from remote sensing, geophysics, in situ measurements, and modeling
15.20-15.40	Mike MacFerrin	Compaction and firn cores from the Greenland ice sheet 2012-2016
15.40-16.00	Paul Vallelonga	Observations regarding the 2012 melt event in the Greenland accumulation zone
16.00-16.20	Peter Kuipers Munneke	Modelling elevation change of the Greenland Ice Sheet firn layer, 1960-2014
16.20-16.40	Discussion points for the next days	Discussant: Jason Box
16.40-18.30	Ice Breaker	Sponsored by International Arctic Science Committee (IASC)
Thursday 2 June
Convener: Babis Charalampidis
09.10-09.30	Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen	Sea ice – what does this has to do with the Greenland Ice Sheet SMB?
09.30-09.50	Konrad Steffen	Greenland Swiss Camp Climatology: 1990 – 2016
09.50-10.10	Horst Machguth	Successive and intense melt rapidly decreases Greenland meltwater retention in firn
10.10-10.30	Stef Lhermitte	Clouds enhance Greenland ice sheet meltwater runoff
Break
11.00-12.20	Discussion	Discussant: Koni Steffen
Lunch		Sponsored by International Arctic Science Committee (IASC)
Convener: Baptiste Vandecrux
13.30-13.50	Stefan Ligtenberg	Modelling 3-D liquid water flow in the Greenland firn aquifer
13.50-14.10	Sebastian Mernild	Surface mass balance and runoff modeling for Greenland Ice Sheet based on SnowModel
14.10-14.30	Peter Langen	Introducing percolation physics in the regional climate model HIRHAM5
14.30-14.50	Nander Wever	Recent advances in liquid water flow modelling in the physics based SNOWPACK model
Break
15.20-16.30	Discussion	Discussant: Michiel van den Broeke
16.30-18.30	Poster Session
19.00-23.00	Workshop dinner	Café G [link] (Co-sponsored by IASC)
Friday 3 June
Convener: Xavier Fettweis
09.10-09.30	Jan Leanerts	Firn air depletion and high melt in grounding zone of an East Antarctic ice shelf
09.30-09.50	Samantha Buzzard	The accumulation of surface meltwater on ice shelves
09.50-10.10	Christian Steger	Refreezing and liquid water storage on the Greenland ice sheet: a model comparison
10.10-10.30	Kristin Poinar	Model-based constraints on the depths and thermal influence of water-filled crevasses in western Greenland
Break
Convener: Ruth Mottram
11.00-11.20	Sergey Marchenko	Measuring and simulating snow/firn temperature evolution at Lomonosovfonna affected by preferential water flow
11.20-11.40	Samira Samimi	Meltwater Runoff and Storage Based on Dielectric Properties of the Supraglacial Snowpack on Haig Glacier, Canadian Rocky Mountains
11.40-12.00	Achim Heilig	Continuous determination of liquid water retention in seasonal snowpacks and application to perennial firn.
12.00-12.20	Björn Saß	Improvement of geodetic glacier mass balances with integrated firn elevation change modeling
Lunch		Sponsored by International Arctic Science Committee (IASC)
13.30-15.00	Discussion	Discussant: W. Tad Pfeffer

 

Poster presentations

	Posters:	Title
1	Patrick Alexander	The impact of meltwater on modeled Greenland Ice Sheet density profiles
2	Willem Jan van de Berg	On the densification of snow
3	Matthew Cooper	What can supraglacial rivers on the Greenland Ice Sheet teach us about seasonal meltwater retention in snow and firn?
4	Alexandra Gossart	The importance of wind on East Antarctic ice shelf stability
5	Juliana Costi	Surface meltwater production, retention and runoff trends on the Antarctic Peninsula (WITHDRAWN)
6	Xavier Fettweis	Sensibility of the Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance simulated by the regional model MAR to the irreducible water saturation in snow and the pore hole close off density
7	Joel Harper	Challenges and Limitations of Using In Situ Observations to Assess Modeled Infiltration and Refreezing in Firn
8	Stan Jakobs	Effects of snow layer initialisation and soot concentration on meltwater retention
9	Leo Kampenhout	Firn modelling in the Community Earth System Model (CESM)
10	Horst Machguth	Greenland surface mass balance observations from the ice sheet ablation area and local glaciers
11	Ruth Mottram	The importance of retention and refreezing to the surface mass balance of small Arctic glaciers
12	Brice Noël	A downscaled 1km dataset of daily Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance components (1958-2015)
13	Ward van Pelt	The changing role of snow conditions and refreezing on mass loss of Svalbard glaciers
14	Baptiste Vandecrux	Understanding non-linear change in the permeability of firn on Greenland ice sheet
15	Melchior van Wessem	The simulated Surface Mass Balance of the Antarctic Peninsula

 

• The workshop starts Wednesday Sep 20 at 12.00, and ends Friday Sep 22 at 12.00.
• A PROMICE 10-year jubilee and reception is planned for the afternoon of Sep 22.

Purpose

• to present and discuss results on modeling of meltwater retention processes in snow and firn on ice sheets and glaciers;
• to plan and coordinate meltwater retention model development;
• to emphasize optical remote sensing snow parameter data comparison and data assimilation;
• to formulate a protocol for a meltwater retention model intercomparison project (RetMIP)

This is workshop two as part of Danish Council for Independent Research (DFF) Natural Sciences program (FNU) project 4002-00234: Understanding and predicting non-linear change in the permeability of Greenland firn and has a special session co-sponsored by the ESA Scientific Exploitation of Operational Missions (SEOM) Sentinel-3 for Science, Land Study 1: SNOW.

 

1. Snow model development
2. Meltwater retention model validation
3. Meltwater retention model intercomparison project (RetMIP)
4. Optical remote sensing to improve snow models

Session 1 welcomes, for example, model considerations of water availability vs. percolation rate vs. refreezing rate to explore the importance of heterogeneous percolation modelling in polar firn; fine-and-local scale/detailed modeling with possible suggestions to including bulk effects in larger-scale models; inclusion of piping (for instance, by “skipping layers” during percolation) in distributed or single-column models; inclusion of horizontal water motion in snow and firn, i.e. between grid cells.

Session 2 will focus on discussions of useful model validation metrics and aim to compile observational datasets that may be used to validate the above processes.

• survey and prioritize remotely sensed snow parameter data users’ requirements for global and regional snow information
• discuss how to enhance methods for estimating snow parameters, either from remote sensing or from modeling, and to evaluate advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches
• consult users about the utility/interest in other snow products suitable for studying climate-related issues.

• a protocol for a retention model intercomparison project (RetMIP) including instructions and datasets for validation.
• a list of requirements and minimum accuracy levels for models using optical remotely sensed snow parameter data
• a journal special issue like the 2016 special issue in Frontiers in Earth Science – Melt Water Retention Processes in Snow and Firn on Ice Sheets and Glaciers: Observations and Modeling, papers feeding into the IPCC Special Report on Climate change and the oceans and the cryosphere.