Model Intercomparison Project
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| mip_abstract | As the climate warms, mass loss of the grounded ice sheet and floating ice shelves surrounding Antarctica is accelerating, increasing meltwater input into the Southern Ocean. Meltwater-induced changes in ocean circulation have the potential to influence the ability of the Southern Ocean to uptake heat and carbon, providing an important feedback on climate change. Nonetheless, almost all existing coupled climate models have fixed ice sheets, and lack the physics required to represent the dominant sources of Antarctic melt. These missing ice dynamics represent a key uncertainty that is unaccounted for in current global climate change projections. The goal of the Southern Ocean Freshwater Input from Antarctica Model Intercomparison Project (SOFIAMIP) is to quantify the climate system response to Antarctic meltwater input. Notably, changes in ocean dynamics, sea ice loss and ice shelf melt around the Antarctic margins, as well as resulting changes in atmospheric dynamics, precipitation, global warming rate and sea level rise are of direct interest and relevance both to CMIP and resulting climate assessments. Associated responses and feedbacks are model dependent and SOFIAMIP will enable the quantification of such model uncertainty. The MIP proposes a series of coupled atmosphere/ocean/sea-ice model experiments, including idealized meltwater experiments, historical experiments with observationally consistent meltwater input, and future scenarios driven by meltwater inputs derived from stand-alone ice sheet models. These experiments are designed to test forcing uncertainties. We welcome contributions based on both CMIP6 and CMIP7 models. By comparing these experiments with the equivalent (standard CMIP) simulations without additional meltwater input, the climate impacts will be quantified. |
| mip_long_name | Southern Ocean Freshwater Input from Antarctica Model Intercomparison Project |
| mip_website | https://sofiamip.github.io/ |
| name | SOFIAMIP |
| uid | 527f5c66-8c97-11ef-944e-41a8eb05f654 |