News

The Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks is seeking a PhD student for the recently funded NSF project “Understanding the controls on spatial and temporal variability in ice discharge using a Greenland-wide ice sheet model”. The overall goal of this project is to develop novel parameterizations of ice-ocean interaction that are suitable for large scale ice-sheet modeling. The interdisciplinary project is co-led by Andy Aschwanden (UAF; ice sheet modeling) and Patrick Heimbach (U Texas at Austin, ocean modeling) and comprises two PhD positions, one focussing on the ocean side (see separate announcement) and the other on the ice sheet side (this posting). The student here at UAF will implement and test parameterizations within the framework of the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM) but will closely collaborate with U Texas, including mutual visits.

This release has substantial changes to the code base, but users will not see many large differences. The goal of most code changes was to improve modularity and usability, making PISM easier to use, maintain and extend.

Congratulations to Ricarda Winkelmann of the University of Potsdam for receiving the EGU’s Outstanding Early Career Scientists Award in Cryospheric Sciences. Her involvement with ice sheet modeling started with a very cold trip to Fairbanks Alaska in November 2008, leading to a 2011 paper on the design of PISM-PIK which is one of the most-cited PISM papers. (PISM-PIK introduced new features for marine ice sheets which were merged into PISM itself a few years later.) The EGU citation on her work, which has mostly been on the impact of large ice masses on global sea level change, says her papers are a “testament to her exceptional clarity of thought and physical insight.” Search “Winkelmann” in the publications page for many examples.

The blog for HPC provider Mellanox Technologies, which supplies fast interconnects for many supercomputers, features Andy Aschwanden’s work using PISM for studying the Greenland Ice Sheet.

The core team at UAF continues to support PISM users. The new email for help is uaf-pism@alaska.edu; it replaces help@pism-docs.org. As before, email to this address will be distributed to all the UAF developers, and so it will get the most prompt response year-round.