Summary

The overall objective of iCLIPS is to improve projections of climate and sea-level changes over the next century and millennium, and to better understand their causes and mechanisms. This will be achieved by constraining the rates of climate change in the future based on simulations of the Last Interglacial (LIG, 130-115 kyr BP). This approach is based on the use of LOVECLIM, a global three-dimensional Earth system model of intermediate complexity (EMIC) developed in earlier Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) projects over the last decade. The computational efficiency of this model will be exploited for a large number of experiments of the LIG climate and for long-term climate and sea-level change projections over the next millennium based on the new Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios. The key physical processes that control the evolution of climate, ice sheets and sea-level on millennial time scales and the likelihood of abrupt changes will be identified. The focus lies on the evolution of the two polar regions, the North Atlantic and Europe.

iCLIPS team

• Philippe Huybrechts (promotor, coordinator)
• Heiko Goelzer
  
Earth System Sciences & Department Geografie, Vrije Universiteit Brussel,Belgium


• Thierry Fichefet (promotor)
• Marie-France Loutre
  
Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth and Climate Research (TECLIM), Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

iCLIPS user committee:

• Dr. Koen BEERTEN (Studiecentrum voor Kernenergie, Mol, Belgium)
• Dr. Pascale BRACONNOT (Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, Saclay, France)
• Prof. Dr. Dorthe DAHL-JENSEN (Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
• Nathalie VAN ISACKER (International Polar Foundation, Brussels, Belgium)
• Prof. Dr. Jonathan GREGORY (Department of Meteorology, University of Reading and Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, United Kingdom)
• Marc DEPOORTERE (Federal Council for Sustainable Development, Brussels, Belgium)
• Prof. Dr. Reto KNUTTI (Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, Switzerland)
• Prof. Dr. Anders LEVERMANN (Universitaet Potsdam and Potsdam Institut für Klimafolgenforschung, Potsdam, Germany)
• Prof. Dr. Hans RENSSEN (Departement Aardwetenschappen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Contact

Heiko Goelzer
Earth System Sciences & Departement Geografie
Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel
Tel: +32-2-629-3782
Fax: +32-2-629-3378
email: hgoelzer@vub.ac.be
Office: 6F326 (Building F, 6th floor)
Campus Etterbeek