This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| Antarctic Ice Sheet CCI | |
|---|---|
| Name | Antarctic Ice Sheet CCI |
| Abbreviation | AIS CCI |
| Type | Research project |
| Parent organization | European Space Agency |
| Start date | 2010s |
| Status | Ongoing |
Antarctic Ice Sheet CCI
The Antarctic Ice Sheet CCI is a climate research initiative focused on producing long-term Antarctica cryospheric datasets to inform Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments and national polar programs. The project integrates satellite remote sensing, field campaigns, and numerical modeling to quantify ice mass balance, glacier dynamics, and sea level contributions for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change reporting and the Paris Agreement. Outputs are designed to support decisions by agencies such as the European Commission, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and national polar institutes including the Australian Antarctic Division and the British Antarctic Survey.
The project is managed within the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative framework and interfaces with global efforts like Global Cryosphere Watch, the World Meteorological Organization programs, and the Global Climate Observing System. It aims to synthesize observations from missions such as CryoSat-2, ICESat, ICESat-2, Sentinel-1, and ERS-1 into coherent products used by stakeholders including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, United Nations Environment Programme, and national research centers like the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Primary objectives include quantifying Antarctic mass trends relevant to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, characterizing grounding line migration tied to the Antarctic Treaty System governance context, and improving representations of ice-ocean interactions for models used by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. The scope spans the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, East Antarctic Ice Sheet, ice shelves such as Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier, and peripheral glaciers monitored by programs at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the Scott Polar Research Institute.
The AIS CCI produces standardized gridded datasets including elevation change maps, velocity fields, and mass balance time series aligned with conventions from the Global Climate Observing System and interoperability efforts like the Open Geospatial Consortium. Methodologies combine altimetry processing used by European Space Agency mission teams, interferometric techniques developed in studies by Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists, and gravimetry comparisons with products from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and GRACE Follow-On. Data provenance practices reference community standards adopted by the World Data System and collaborative code repositories maintained with partners such as Centre National d'Études Spatiales and Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt.
Key satellite inputs include radar altimeters on CryoSat-2 and ERS-2, laser altimetry from ICESat and ICESat-2 carrying the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System, Synthetic Aperture Radar from the Sentinel-1 constellation, and gravimetric constraints from GRACE and GRACE Follow-On. Complementary imagery derives from sensors aboard Landsat, MODIS on the Aqua mission, and passive microwave records from ERS and MetOp platforms. Instrument teams collaborate with research centers such as NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.
Validation leverages in situ campaigns coordinated with groups like the British Antarctic Survey, United States Antarctic Program, and the Australian Antarctic Division using GPS networks, airborne lidar surveys by teams from Columbia University and the Alfred Wegener Institute, and oceanographic observations from RRS Ernest Shackleton and RV Polarstern expeditions. Uncertainty frameworks align with guidance from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites, employing error budgeting, cross-mission intercomparison studies with ICESat-2 teams, and statistical techniques used by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Cambridge.
Products inform sea level projections used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and adaptation planning by entities such as the European Commission, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and coastal authorities in nations including Bangladesh, Netherlands, and Tuvalu. The datasets support operational services at the Copernicus Programme and feed into risk assessments by the World Bank and insurance analyses by multinational firms. Scientific outputs underpin treaty discussions within the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting and research prioritization by funding bodies such as the European Research Council and national science foundations including the National Science Foundation.
The AIS CCI grew from the ESA CCI portfolio in response to community recommendations from workshops involving International Arctic Science Committee, Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, and the Global Cryosphere Watch. Consortium partners include universities and institutes such as the University of Leeds, University of Bristol, ETH Zurich, University of Oslo, and agencies including Centre National d'Études Spatiales and Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt. Historical milestones trace through contributions to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, integration with Copernicus Sentinel data streams, and methodological advances acknowledged in publications by teams affiliated with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Category:Climate change research projects