RAPID - Joint International Round - Punctuated disintegration of the NW European Ice Sheet and rapid climate change Project

Introduction

Despite the large amount of study dedicated to understanding the development of the last glaciation in Europe over the last two hundred years, the firm existence of extensive glaciation over the North Sea, as well as the existence of an ice stream issuing through the Norwegian Channel has only recently been established. These two major parts of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet, joining the continental ice to that of the British Isles, provide a potentially important source for meltwater and icebergs to have entered the North Atlantic in the past. There is previous evidence that at least some of the Heinrich events - sustained periods of significant iceberg calving to the North Atlantic - originated from the eastern Atlantic, or at least contained a contribution from these eastern ice masses, as opposed to the original view of Heinrich events as emanating from the Laurentide Ice Sheet. In this proposal we aim to establish the area, volume and history of the ice sheet over the North Sea, and the Norwegian Channel Ice Stream during the last, Weichselian, glaciation. This will provide the basis for modelling experiments, employing a state-of-the-art iceberg trajectory model, to examine the likely path of icebergs from this region of the Europe, and their potential impact on North Atlantic convection processes, and hence the global thermohaline circulation.

Project Duration: 1 Jul 2005 - 30 Jun 2008

This project is funded by UK NERC, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and the Research Council of Norway - Grant Ref. NE/C509523/1 - through the RAPID Climate Change NERC directed mode programme.

Access to data and information

Data and software supplied from this project to the BADC will be stored in the BADC RAPID archive.

Access to the archive is currently restricted to participants to this particular project. If you are a programme participant and would like to access this RAPID project data, then please apply for access^* to the RAPID data.

You will be requested to abide by the RAPID Climate Change Data Policy.
Data management, availability and use are ruled by the RAPID Climate Change Programme Data Management Plan (PDF document).
Access to Hadley Centre model data held at the BADC is subject to the signature of the NERC-Met Office agreement.

^* Note that to apply for access to this dataset, you should first register as a BADC user (anyone is allowed to register). If you are already a registered BADC user, skip this step. If you have forgotten your BADC user ID and/or password, please contact the BADC helpdesk at badc@rl.ac.uk. To register as a new BADC user, please follow the instructions online.

Citation

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Who to contact

This RAPID project is led by Prof Grant Bigg of the University of Sheffield, with co-investigators also at the University of Sheffield and the University of Bergen, Norway.

General queries about these pages or browsing the data should be directed to the BADC support line.

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