New avenues for studying ice sheets in warmer climates

The melting of ice sheets constitutes the largest source of uncertainty in long-term sea-level projections. Because these ice sheets respond very slowly to changes in climate, direct observations alone cannot reduce this uncertainty. Instead, we require computer models that can be used on very long timescales. Here, we develop a new generation of these models, with a resolution that’s intelligently adapted to the shape of the ice sheet, so as to make optimal use of the available computational power. The resulting models can be used not only to calculate changes in shape and volume of the ice sheets, but also to help interpret information from ice cores.