BGS Hosted Metadata
RAPID The Mass balance and freshwater contribution of the Greenland ice sheet: Numerical model and observational data
"The Mass balance and freshwater contribution of the Greenland ice sheet: a combined modelling and observational approach" project, which was a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) RAPID Climate Change Research Programme project (Joint International Round - NE/C51631X/1 - Duration 1 Jun 2005 - 30 Nov 2008) led Prof Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol, with co-investigators at the Nansen Environmental & Remote Sensing Center, Norway, the Royal Netherlands Meteorology Institute and Dr MR van den Broeke, University of Utrecht, Netherlands.
The dataset quantifies how, where and when the Greenland ice sheet has fed fresh water through iceberg calving, subglacial melting and meltwater runoff into the surrounding ocean during the last half century.
This dataset collection contains precipitation, evaporation and run off model outputs.
The thermohaline circulation is a global ocean circulation, driven by differences in the density of the sea water that is controlled by temperature (thermal) and salinity (haline). In the north Atlantic, the thermohaline circulation transports warm and salty water to the north, where it, together with the North Atlantic Drift (the north-eastern most extension of the Gulfstream), contributes to the warm sea surface along the coast of western Europe and to the relatively mild European winters. From ice cores drilled in Greenland, there is evidence that rapid climate changes took place during the last glacial (the period roughly from 100,000 to 20,000 years before present): over a period of just several decades, northern European winter temperature dropped by as much as 10 degrees for periods typically lasting 1000 years. The present explanation is that large, pulse-like freshwater fluxes (probably from icebergs that originated from the continental ice sheets) were released into the north Atlantic where they weakened or shut down the thermohaline circulation. In a warmer greenhouse climate, it is also likely that the freshwater flux into the north Atlantic will increase; using a scenario of doubling CO2 within the next 70 years, most atmospheric models predict an increase in precipitation in high latitudes. One of the great uncertainties in these projections is the role of the Greenland ice sheet, which is situated in the middle of the area of interest. We know so little about the variability in its meltwater production and its sensitivity to regional warming that its contribution to the problem of the north Atlantic thermohaline circulation is often ignored, in spite of the fact that the Greenland ice sheet contains enough water to rise global sea level by 6 m! In this proposed research we quantifyed in detail how, where and when the Greenland ice sheet has fed fresh water through iceberg calving, subglacial melting and meltwater runoff into the surrounding ocean during the last half century. The melting and runoff was calculated using a coupled snow - atmosphere model that is run over Greenland at very high resolution (11 km in the horizontal), which took about 1 year on a supercomputer to run!
Rapid Climate Change (RAPID) was a £20 million, six-year (2001-2007) programme for the Natural Environment Research Council. The programme aimed to improve the ability to quantify the probability and magnitude of future rapid change in climate, with a main (but not exclusive) focus on the role of the Atlantic Ocean's Thermohaline Circulation.
Simple
- Date (Publication)
- 2008-12-10T02:34:13
- Date (Creation)
- 2008-12-10T02:34:13
- Citation identifier
- https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/d285c1977d3d623197ff3e95f8328c4f
- Citation identifier
- NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) / d285c1977d3d623197ff3e95f8328c4f
- Point of contact
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Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
unknown
Author Unavailable
Bamber, Jonathan
Unavailable
Author Unavailable
van den Broeke, M.R.
Unavailable
Author Unavailable
et. al,
Unavailable
Author NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)
Custodian NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)
Distributor NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)
pointofContact NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)
Publisher
- Maintenance and update frequency
- Unknown
- Update scope
- Series
- Keywords
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RAPID
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Climate change
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Atlantic Ocean's Thermohaline Circulation
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GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
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atmospheric conditions
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- Access constraints
- Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- Please contact the data centre for assistance on accessing data from this dataset collection.
- Use constraints
- Other restrictions
- Spatial representation type
- Grid
- Language
- English
- Topic category
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- Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere
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- Begin date
- 1958-01-01T00:00:00
- End date
- 2008-12-31T23:59:59
- Unique resource identifier
- WGS 84
- Distribution format
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Name Version Contact data centre for format details.
- Distributor contact
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Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)
Distributor
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/d285c1977d3d623197ff3e95f8328c4f CEDA Data Catalogue Page
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/rapid/scienceplan.pdf RAPID Science plan
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/rapid/models.html Rapid Models
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/rapid/rapid_brochure.pdf Rapid brochure
- Hierarchy level
- Series
Conformance result
- Title
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Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services
- Date (Publication)
- 2010-12-08
- Statement
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Please see data lineage statements for each dataset within this collection for data lineage details.
Metadata
- File identifier
- d285c1977d3d623197ff3e95f8328c4f XML
- Metadata language
- English
- Character set
- UTF8
- Hierarchy level
- Series
- Hierarchy level name
-
series
- Date stamp
- 2026-02-08T03:28:54
- Metadata standard name
- UK GEMINI
- Metadata standard version
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2.3
- Metadata author
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Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)
Point of contact
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