Welcome to the Ice-sheet and Sea-level System Model (ISSM) website (formerly, Ice Sheet System Model). ISSM is the result of a collaboration between the┬аJet Propulsion Laboratory,┬аDartmouth College, and┬аUniversity of California at Irvine. Its purpose is to tackle the challenge of modeling the evolution of the polar ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica.
ISSM is┬аopen source┬аand is funded by the NASA Cryosphere, IceBridge Research and MAP (Modeling Analysis and Prediction) programs, JPL R&TD (Research, Technology and Development) and the National Science Foundation.
Large scale ice flow models are necessary that can accurately model the evolution of Greenland and Antarctica in a warming climate. In order to achieve this goal, and improve projections of future sea level rise, ISSM relies on state of the art technologies. These include:
- Finite Element Modeling, which allows for the use of unstructured meshes to reach high resolutions in areas where ice flow dynamics is critical.
- Higher-order ice dynamics: instead of relying on the Shallow Ice Approximation (SIA), ISSM includes a suite of model of increasing complexity, including Full-Stokes.
- Parallel technologies, using state of the art clusters such as the NASA Advanced Supercomputing┬аPleiades cluster. This allows ISSM to run bigger models, with a faster turn around.
- Anisotropic mesh refinement, which allows ISSM to zoom in on areas of interest, while saving computational resources by using coarse meshes where ice flow is stagnant.
- Data assimilation using inverse methods to infer unknown parameters from observations, using either variational data assimilation or using automatic differentiation.
- Sensitivity analysis tools, based on the┬аDakota toolkit┬аfrom Sandia National Laboratories. This suite of tools allows ISSM to constrain projections of future sea level rise, and to assess the reliability of such projections.
Capability Support
| Capability | Support | Contacts |
|---|---|---|
| MATLAB Interface | Production (fully Supported) | ISSM team |
| Python Interface | Production (fully Supported) | Quinn |
| Mesh generation | Production (fully Supported) | Morlighem |
| Stress balance | Production (fully Supported) | ISSM team |
| Thermal | Production (fully Supported) | Seroussi, Morlighem |
| Transient | Production (fully Supported) | ISSM team |
| Grounding line (hydrostatic) | Production (fully Supported) | ISSM team |
| Mass transport | Production (fully Supported) | ISSM team |
| Static inversions (friction, B) | Production (fully Supported) | ISSM team |
| UQ (dakota) | Production (fully Supported) | Schlegel |
| Balance velocities | Development (not fully supported) | Morlighem |
| Calving | Development (not fully supported) | Morlighem |
| Damage | Development (not fully supported) | Larour |
| MITgcm coupling | Development (not fully supported) | Seroussi |
| Automatic Differentiation | Development (not fully supported) | Morlighem |
| Hydrology GlaDS | Development (not fully supported) | Ehrenfeucht |
| Hydrology SHAKTI | Development (not fully supported) | Sommers |
| Stochastic forcings | Development (not fully supported) | Verjans |
| Grounding line (FS, contact) | Experimental (not supported) | Seroussi |
| Mass conservation | Experimental (not supported) | Morlighem |
| Adaptive Mesh Refinement | Experimental (not supported) | dos Santos |
| Rifts | Experimental (not supported) | Larour |
| GIA | Experimental (not supported) | Caron |
| Crustal displacement | Experimental (not supported) | Adhikari, Caron |
| Sea level | Experimental (not supported) | Larour, Adhikari, Caron |
| Grounding zone | Experimental (not supported) | Poinelli |
Contact Us
Contact us on┬аour GitHub page.
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