MOCA: Meltwater routing and Ocean-Cryosphere-Atmosphere response a joint network project of the INQUA PALCOM (Paleoclimate) and TERPRO (Terrestrial Processes) Commissions

Principle Objective: to establish a constrained regional meltwater and iceberg discharge chronology for all major ice sheets 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 was a joint project of the INQUA PALCOMM and TERPRO Commissions and then later as an independent network. The listserve is still enabled, and a few of us are working on constraining pre-LGM evolution of North America and Europe. An interim community-based update to the Dyke 2004 deglacial North American Ice Sheet complex margin chronology has recently been completed:

April S. Dalton, Martin Margold, Chris R. Stokes, Lev Tarasov, Arthur S. Dyke, and many others... An updated radiocarbon-based ice margin chronology for the last deglaciation of the North American Ice Sheet Complex. QSR, online article, 2020.

An earlier network publication summarizes some of the relevant discussions from workshops and collaborations:

Chris R Stokes; Lev Tarasov; Robin Blomdin; Thomas M Cronin; Timothy G Fisher; Richard Gyllencreutz; Clas Hättestrand; Jakob Heyman; Richard Hindmarsh; Anna Hughes; Martin Jakobsson; Nina Kirchner; Stephen J Livingstone; Martin Margold; Julian Murton; Riko Noormets; Richard W Peltier; Dorothy M Peteet; David Piper; Frank Preusser; Hans Renssen; Dave H Roberts; Didier Roche; Francky Saint-Ange; Arjen P Stroeven; James T Teller. On the Reconstruction of Palaeo-Ice Sheets: Recent Advances and Future Challenges. Quaternary Science Reviews, vol 125, p 15-49, doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.07.016, 2015.

The network developed a collaboration with the Paleo Model Intercomparison Project (PMIP II) and associated modelling groups. MOCA provided data-calibrated glaciologically self-consistent ice and meltwater deglacial chronologies. Over time, it will 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

Past meetings

Joint Model-data workshop for the Late Pleistocene evolution of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
LGGE, Grenoble, May 22-24, 2014

MOCA margin project workshop at CANQUA 2013, Edmonton, Canada.

Open MOCA meeting/workshop at the 2011 INQUA congress in Bern on Wednesday, 27 July, 08.45 – 12.30, Novotel Room Muri. After a quick review of what's been done, we'll discuss next steps for MOCA and spend most of our time sketching out a collective paper.

MOCA session at the 2011 INQUA congress in Bern: Understanding last glacial cycle ice sheets and meltwater impact through data and modelling. What did the ice sheets do, why, and how did they affect the rest of the climate system, especially via freshwater fluxes?

Joint MOCA/APEX (Arctic Palaeoclimate and its Extreme) international conference and workshop in Iceland, May 26-31/2010. MOCA had an additional 1 day workshop on May 31 in Reykjavik.

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.

accepted MOCA2 project proposal for 2012-2015.

Related links

INQUA PALCOMM commission

INQUA TERPRO commission

Addresses of Steering Committee Members:

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