ICE³ - Modelling the global multi-century evolution of glacier ICE in 3D

Glaciers are key contributors to sea-level rise and are critical water resources that supply fresh water to hundreds of millions of people around the world. It is therefore of paramount importance to accurately simulate the future evolution of these precious ice bodies. Despite recent progress in modelling the global evolution of glaciers, existing simulations suffer from uncertainties related to (i) model input, (ii) a simplified representation of glacier processes, and (iii) an important mismatch between the timescales over which models are calibrated (multi-annual to decadal) and those over which the future glacier projections occur (century timescale). ICE³ aim to tackle these problems, by (i) reducing uncertainties in model input through innovative inversion of climatic information, (ii) developing new approaches to model glacier processes in 3D, and (iii) for the first time simulating past glacier evolution globally over centennial time scales with an ice-dynamic model. These improvements will lead to new global glacier evolution projections under a range of future emission scenarios. The ICE³ project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon Framework research and innovation programme grant (agreement No 101115565).