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These are the intended use-case/justification for one or multiple variable groups. Opportunities are linked to relevant experiment groups. Identifying opportunities helps to provide a structure to map variables against requirements. Each opportunity description will convey why this combination of variables and experiments is important and how they contribute to impact.
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| description | This opportunity will allow assessments in the fields of glaciology and glacio-hydrology across timescales in the past, present, and future. It focuses on glaciers in the polar regions (including peripheral glaciers in Greenland and (Sub-)Antarctica that are decoupled from the ice sheets) and mountain glaciers, as identified in the Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI). These glaciers have been the largest cryospheric driver of sea-level rise in the 20th century. Depending on the scenario (AR6), glaciers are expected to remain the primary drivers of sea-level rise during the 21st century, exceeding the contributions from the two ice sheets. They have significance in sustaining ecosystems, modulating regional hydroclimates, and as a freshwater resource (particularly in, but not limited to, seasonally arid regions like central Asia and the western slopes of the Andes). Through feedbacks in the mass balance response to climate change, glaciers are regional-scale tipping points in the Earth system and are an important element in assessing geohazards (e.g., glacial lake outburst floods, avalanches). |
| expected_impacts | (1) One important use case is the Glacier Model Intercomparison Project (GlacierMIP, under the umbrella of the WCRP CliC project), which is a coordinated intercomparison effort of global-scale glacier models aiming for model improvements and reducing uncertainties in global glacier projections. These involve historical and future simulations of glacier geometry change at century scales. The outputs from GlacierMIP have informed the IPCC Special Report on The Cryosphere and the Oceans in a Warming Climate (Hock et al. 2019) and IPCC AR6 report (Marzeion et al. 2020). (2) Another use is integration of glacier melt in hydrologic models for accurate partitioning between glacier-melt, snow-melt, and baseflow contributions to runoff. This requires variables from terrestrial hydrology and snow processes at daily resolutions for sub-seasonal and seasonal assessments of streamflows. (3) This opportunity will assist in the evaluation of the mountain cryosphere, with a particular emphasis on glaciers as important regional tipping points, which is a focus area of the WCRP CliC project. (4) The opportunity will further support assessments on local to regional-scale geohazards associated with glacier change under different scenarios, including glacial lake outburst floods, slope failures, avalanches and ice falls, etc. |
| justification_of_resources | The variables in this opportunity are critical as inputs for the glacier modeling community and to study the impacts of climate change on glaciers and of glacier changes on climate systems. |
| lead_theme | Land & Land-Ice |
| minimum_ensemble_size | 1 |
| name | Glacier changes, drivers, and impacts |
| opportunity_id | 35 |
| data_request_themes | Impacts & Adaptation, Land & Land-Ice |
| experiment_groups | picontrol, scenarios, historical |
| mips | PMIP, LMIP, TIPMIP |
| time_subsets | 80ac3156-a698-11ef-914a-613c0433d878 |
| variable_groups | baseline_daily, baseline_fixed, baseline_monthly, landice_glaciers_allfreq, snow_allfreq |