A new project started at IGE : The Scale-Aware Sea Ice Project (SASIP)

Last month, a new project coordinated by the IGE has started. With 10 international partners from France, Norway, the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany, the SASIP project aims to develop a new model for sea ice - the large sheet of ice floating on the surface of the polar oceans - capable of resolving the complexity of its dynamics in order to improve its representation in the future generation of climate models. SASIP also aims to provide a new perspective on our understanding of the impact of global warming on the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice covers, and the numerous feedback loops involved in controlling the climate at larger scale.

The project, coordinated by Pierre Rampal, involves several researchers from the Grenoble campus such as Véronique Dansereau and Jérôme Weiss (ISTerre, Institute of Earth Sciences). Other CNRS laboratories are also involved, such as CECI (Climate, Environment, Couplings and Uncertainties) and LOCEAN (Laboratory of Oceanography and Climate : Experiments and Digital Approaches).

This project is supported by the Schmidt Futures Foundation, a philanthropic initiative founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, through a funding program carried out by the Virtual Earth System Research Institute (VESRI). The scientists involved in the project will work together for 6 years, supported by an estimated budget of about $10.4 million.

In order to provide a model integrating the necessary ingredients for accounting of the multi-scale character of sea ice dynamics, SASIP will build on the existing neXtSIM (next Generation Sea Ice Model) developed by Pierre Rampal and his Norwegian colleagues over the last 6 years. This building process will include the use of data assimilation and new hybrid techniques relying on machine learning. Within the course of the project, the new sea ice model is planned to be coupled to oceanic and atmospheric general circulation models in order to assess the impacts on the climate system at large scale.

Ultimately, the reduction of uncertainties on the projections of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice covers in the coming decades and centuries will allow to support decision-making to limit climate change as much as possible and allow societies to better prepare and adapt.

You can visit the project website or contact the SASIP team at IGE for more information.