Modeling Climate Change: The Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) and Why It Matters (with Joshua Cuzzone)

How do we put the significant changes of the Earth’s atmosphere we’re experiencing now due to anthropogenic or human caused CO2  into context relative to the natural variability our planet has experienced? Rates of mass loss similar to now occurred in the early Holocene Period (~11,500 years ago) but simulations predict the 21st century will far exceed that rate of loss. If we deviate from the business as usual model, commit to low carbon emissions, can we mitigate or reverse sea level rise due to a melting Greenland Ice Sheet?

Assistant Scientist at UCI Department of Earth System Science Joshua Cuzzone joins the WBI show to discuss Rate of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet will exceed Holocene values this century. He co-authored this recently published paper in Nature alongside an interdisciplinary team of paleoclimatologists, glacial geologists and geochemists. Check out this episode to learn about the 5 years they spent examining these questions. We also take an in depth look at the high-resolution Ice Sheet and Sea-level system Model (ISSM) used for simulating rates of GIS mass change from 12,000 years ago to AD 2100.

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Host: J. Khadijah Abdurahman
Music: Drew Lewis
Show Notes: 
Chernobyl: data wars and disaster politics

Recommendations:
The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future by Richard Alley

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