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SCAR Expert Group on Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Balance and Sea Level: ISMASS

In 1993 the Global Change in Antarctica (GLOCHANT) Group of Specialists (GoS), a SCAR initiative, established a task group on the "Antarctic ice sheet mass balance and sea-level" contributions (ISMASS) to address the requirements for a coordinated international approach to resolving the role of the Antarctic ice sheet in sea-level change. The group was established under the chairmanship of Professor Charles Bentley and ISMASS held their first meeting at Cambridge in conjunction with the Fifth International Symposium on Antarctic Glaciology (VISAG), in 1993. With the re-organisation of SCAR and the dissolution of GLOCHANT, ISMASS has now become an Expert Group of the SCAR Physical Sciences Standing Scientific Group (SSG).

Over the past 5 years, ISMASS has ……

(i) held a workshop in Annapolis, MD, USA (June, 2001) at which a strategy was formulated for ISMASS to result in a meaningful scientific approach to understanding and predicting Antarctic ice sheet mass balance (The ISMASS Committee, 2004)

(ii) co-organized (with the SCAR-ANTEC Scientific Programming Planning Group) at AGU, December, 2002, a session on Ice Sheets and Neotectonics

(iii) with SCAR-ANTEC, compiled a Special issue of "Global and Planetary Change" on Ice Sheets and Neotectonics

(iv) held a 1-day workshop on ice sheet mass balance current research in Milan, Italy, 23 August 2003

(v) contributed (including proceedings editing) to the SCAR International Symposium on Antarctic Glaciology, Milan, August 2003 (Jacka, 2004)

(vi) co-organised (with the SCAR International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE) Expert Group) and contributed to a symposium during SCAR at Bremen, Germany on results from both Expert Groups (Hamilton, 2005).

References:

The ISMASS Committee. 2004. Recommendations for the collection and synthesis of Antarctic Ice Sheet mass balance data. Global and Planetary Change 42: 1-15.
James, T.S., T.H. Jacka, A. Morelli and R. Dietrich (eds.) 2004 Special Issue on Ice Sheets and Neotectonics. Global and Planetary Change 42.
Jacka, T.H. (ed). 2004. Papers from the Seventh International Symposium on Antarctic Glaciology (ISAG-7), Milan, August 2003. Annals of Glaciology 39
Hamilton, G (ed.) 2005. Papers from the International Symposium on SCAR ISMASS/ITASE, Bremen, July, 2004. Annals of Glaciology 41.

Report of 2007 NOAA Workshop on Ice Sheet Modeling

Workshop on improving Ice Sheet Models, 5-7 July 2008, St Petersburg, Russia

For information about ISMASS please contact the project coordinator, Cornelis J Vanderveen at: cjvdv@ku.edu