West Antarctic Last Interglacial ice sheet collapse (WANT-ice) - Dynamics of the Antarctic Ice Sheet in the Last Interglacial and its implications for future sea level changes.

• Applicant: Professor Johannes Carl Roderick Sutter, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Atmospheric Science ; Palaeontology ; Physical Geography
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 417975849

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

Project WANT-ice produced a number of fundamental insights into past and future ice sheet dynamics as well as provided the methodological framework for a robust and systematic calibration of continental scale ice sheet models. It helped spark an interest in the integration of isochrones into ice sheet models with several research groups now pursuing similar aims and integration of an isochrone module in the ice sheet model PISM which we are currently testing. Project WANT-ice contributed to the international efforts of the SCAR Action Group AntArchitecture to which I have been newly elected into the steering committee and which currently is preparing a review paper on the stratigraphy of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Maybe most importantly WANT-ice has inspired project CHARIBDIS providing me with the necessary ressources and scientific personnel to achieve a systematical integration of isochrones into ice sheet models and in the process reduce long-standing uncertainties with respect to future Antarctic sea level contributions. Based on these indicators I would argue that project WANT-ice has been a success-story both illustrating the need for improved model calibration rooted in robust paleo-proxy data (i.e. isochrones) and providing constraints on past and future ice sheet evolution.

Publications

• Limited Retreat of the Wilkes Basin Ice Sheet During the Last Interglacial. Geophysical Research Letters, 47(13).
  Sutter, J.; Eisen, O.; Werner, M.; Grosfeld, K.; Kleiner, T. & Fischer, H.
  
• Investigating the internal structure of the Antarctic ice sheet: the utility of isochrones for spatiotemporal ice-sheet model calibration. The Cryosphere, 15(8), 3839-3860.
  Sutter, Johannes; Fischer, Hubertus & Eisen, Olaf
  
• Climate intervention on a high-emissions pathway could delay but not prevent West Antarctic Ice Sheet demise. Nature Climate Change, 13(9), 951-960.
  Sutter, J.; Jones, A.; Frölicher, T. L.; Wirths, C. & Stocker, T. F.