MOCA: Meltwater routing and Ocean-Cryosphere-Atmosphere response

a joint project of the INQUA PALCOM (Paleoclimate) and TERPRO (Terrestrial Processes) Commissions

Principle Objective: to establish a constrained regional meltwater and iceberg discharge chronology for the northern hemisphere during the last deglaciation with well-defined error bars.

The Consequent Objective is to establish a good conceptual understanding of the interactions between the cryosphere, ocean, and atmosphere associated with this chronology.

Brief description

MOCA is a joint project of the INQUA PALCOMM and TERPRO Commissions. To help keep this ambitious project manageable, MOCA incorporates two sub-projects: Constraining North American DEGLACiation (NDEGLAC), and Constraining Eurasian DEGLACiation (EDEGLAC).

The project is developing a collaboration with the Paleo Model Intercomparison Project (PMIP II) and associated modelling groups. MOCA will provide data-calibrated glaciologically self-consistent ice and meltwater deglacial chronologies and iteratively refine these chronologies based on climate model results, observational constraints, glacial systems modelling, and expert insight. An underlying intent of MOCA is to further forge the interdisciplinary links between the glaciological, Quaternary terrestrial, paleoceanographic, and climate modeling communities that are required to adequately decipher and understand past Earth and climate system dynamics especially in the context of mid-high latitude regions and abrupt climate change.

Upcoming meetings

Joint MOCA/APEX (Arctic Palaeoclimate and its Extreme) international conference and workshop in Iceland, May 26-31/2010. MOCA will have an additional 1 day workshop on May 31 in Reykjavik. Registration and abstract submission deadline is March 15.

Past meetings

Joint MOCA/PMIP splinter meeting on finalizing transient experiments for PMIP II and European calibration results and constraint data sets at the EGU 2009 Congress.

MOCA North American deglacial chronology workshop at the 2009 CANQU meeting, Vancouver, Canada.

Key Documents

updated version of accepted MOCA project proposal.

Addresses of Steering Committee Members:

Lev Tarasov,

Dept of Physics and Physical Oceanography, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Canada, lev{aT|physics.mun.ca

Trond Dokken

Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, Norway, trond.dokken{aT|bjerknes.uib.no

Timothy G. Fisher

Dept. of Environmental Sciences, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio, USA, Timothy.Fisher{aT|UToledo.edu

Richard Gyllencreutz,

Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research c/o Dept. of Earth Science University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway, richard.gyllencreutz{aT|geo.uib.no

Hans Renssen,

Department of Paleoclimatology & Geomorphology, Vrije Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands, hans.renssen{aT|falw.vu.nl

Chris Stokes

Department of Geography, Durham University, Durham, UK, C.R.Stokes{aT|durham.ac.uk

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