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Brian Crow

Institution: University of Bremen
Office: GEO 5420
Phone: +49 421 218 - 65448
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Other webpage(s): Brian's MARUM web page
Brian's ArcTrain web page

 

Brian Crow

PhD Project

Modeling Greenland Ice Sheet Collapse in MIS-11, MIS-5, and the Future 

The Greenland Ice Sheet has fluctuated greatly in size over the last several hundred millennia, growing substantially larger during Ice Ages and melting substantially during the longest and warmest interglacial periods. To investigate the relationship between climate forcing and the melt of Greenland, the CESM climate model is being used to run detailed climate simulations of the conditions during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS)-11 (~425,000 to ~390,000 years ago) and MIS-5 (~130,000 to ~115,000). These are the two most recent periods when the climate is believed to have been warmer than modern-day conditions and should therefore provide some indication of how Greenland will respond to our currently warming climate. Key elements will include understanding the relative importance of oceanic and atmospheric heat fluxes over the ice sheet and how these factors may evolve due to the differences in orbital parameters and greenhouse gas concentrations over these ancient periods. The past climate reconstructions will then be used to feed an ice sheet model, with the goal of refining estimates of past melt and developing an improved parameter space in which to operate the ice sheet model for future projections.

Thesis Committee

Prof. Dr. Michael Schulz University of Bremen
Dr. Matthias Prange University of Bremen
Prof. Dr. Ben Marzeion University of Bremen
Prof. Dr. Lev Tarasov Memorial University, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada