Compelling AISS Topic Personally Biased:

1
Compelling AISS Topic (Personally Biased) Causes
Implications of Seasonal Sea Ice Changes
What are the seasonal ocean-atmosphere-ice (OAI)
interactions driving large trends in ice season
duration? What are the climate mechanisms
driving the OAI interactions? What is the
ecosystem response to changes in OAI interactions
and consequent ice season duration? How are
changes in carbon flux mediated by the dynamical
response of ice-ocean-ecosystem interactions to
climate change? What is the current future
prediction of ice rectification of CO2 in
seasonal sea ice zones?
Total change over 1979-2004 -85 20 days
(shorter) 60 10 days (longer)
Rectification Hypothesis winter sea ice
prevents out-gassing of CO2, spring-summer blooms
provide CO2 sink
2
Compelling AISS Topics (Community-generated)

• The Ross Sea open-ocean marine ecosystem
• One of the last places on Earth that has not been
  compromised by human activity
• How marine ecosystems used to operate with both
  vigorous top-down and bottom-up forcing
• Requires integrating physics and biology within
  the context of present and past (e.g.
  paleo-ecology/climate) observations
• Prey shifts in penguin diets
• What are the physical and biological drivers?
• Requires the integration of paleoecology into
  current bio-ocean-air interaction studies to help
  assess ecosystem response to climate (or human
  activity) changes
• Would benefit from regional comparisons (e.g.
  Antarctic Peninsula versus Ross Sea) that
  indicate distinctly different current and past
  conditions
• Land ice-ocean-air interactions under a changing
  (warming) climate
• Needs to be addressed now, as change is happening
  fast in the Peninsula Pine Island area
• Need to measure, model, and parse the effects of
• air warming and surface melting over ice sheets
  and ice shelves
• ocean warming, basal melting, and
  tidewater-glacier-front calving in the same
  regions
• Other enviro-eco marine hot spots that beg for an
  integrative approach
• Polynyas, iceberg wakes, shelf canyons/breaks,
  and ice/drift stations