Sensitivity of Ice and Climate Evolution Patterns to Modelling Uncertainties During the Last Glacial-Interglacial Transitions

How did ice grow (volume, total area, extent) over North America (NA)and Eurasia (EA) during inception? Did the ice-sheets grow and shrinksimultaneously, or each had its own inception time and maximum extentand volume? How did the atmosphere respond to the changes in surfacealbedo, altitude, dust concentration, and other feedbacks in thesystem? And more interestingly, given the uncertainties in theclimate system, is there more than one way glacial inception anddeglaciation could happen? By exploring the sensitivity of the lastglacial inception and deglaciation to uncertainties in modelling suchas representation of radiative effect of clouds, initial state of theocean, downscaling and upscaling various climatic fields between theatmospheric and ice model, and albedo calculation, we try to answerthese questions. Therefore, we set up an ensemble of simulations for both inception anddeglaciation to investigate the extent to which such modellinguncertainties can affect ice volume, area, and regional thicknessevolution patterns, in addition to various climatic fields, such asthe Rossby number, jet-stream location and strength, and sea-iceexpansion, during these two periods of interest. We analyze theensemble results to 1. investigate how important the parameters weincluded in our ensemble can be in simulating glacial-interglacialtransitions, and 2. explore different possible patterns of the lastglacial inception and deglaciation. The ensemble is set up using a fully-coupled Earth Model ofIntermediate Complexity, LOVECLIM, previously used in severalpaleoclimate modelling studies, and a 3D thermo-mechanically coupledice sheet model. The coupled model is capable of simulating 1000years in about 24 hours using a single core, making it possible toaccomplish an ensemble of 1000s of runs for both transition periodswithin a few weeks.