The U.S. Climate Variability and Predictability Research Program (CLIVAR) will sponsor an international workshop entitled "Understanding the Response of Greenland's Marine Terminating Glaciers to Oceanic and Atmospheric Forcing." It is scheduled to convene 3-7 June 2013 in Boston, Massachusetts.
CLIVAR is a U.S. national research program investigating the variability and predictability of the global climate system on seasonal, inter-annual, decadal, and centennial timescales, with a particular emphasis on the role the ocean plays in climate variability.
Organizers of the workshop seek to bring together oceanographers, glaciologists, and atmospheric and climate scientists working on all aspects of the problem related to the widespread retreat and speedup of marine-terminating outlet glaciers in Greenland over the past two decades. This process has led to a doubling of the ice sheet's contribution to sea level rise and increased the freshwater input to the North Atlantic. Its coincidence with a period of oceanic and atmospheric warming suggests a common climate driver. Progress on understanding and parameterizing the mechanisms behind these dynamic responses in climate and ice sheet models requires a collaborative, international, cross-disciplinary, and multi-faceted approach.