Changes between Version 7 and Version 8 of WikiStart

Timestamp:

12/16/09 13:32:46 (13 years ago)

Author:

karpeev

Comment:

--

WikiStart

@@ -1 +1 @@
 = SISIPHUS: Scalable Ice-Sheet Solvers and Infrastructure for Petascale, High-Resolution, Unstructured Simulations =
+
+SISIPHUS is a model and software infrastructure for climate simulations related to the dynamics of ""ice sheets"" -- glaciers that straddle [[BR]]
+land and sea as ground ice slides into the ocean. 
+Understanding the dynamics of ice sheets is crucial for accurate predictions of long-term [[BR]] sea levels changes, as the melt of the ice near 
+its "grounding line" is expected to be the main contributor to the rise of global sea levels.
+
+The dynamics of ice sheets unfolds on the timescale of decades or even centuries, but at the same time, can undergo sudden changes [[BR]]
+when the glaciers protruding from land into the ocean disintegrate in a matter of weeks.
+These sudden changes are conjectured [[BR]] to be related to instabilities in the ice sheets associated with the geometry of their grounding lines.
+Thus, accurate predictions of the future [[BR]] state of ice sheets and their contribution to the rise of global sea levels necessitates long-term simulations[[BR]]
+of the ice sheet dynamics, calculations of its (quasi)stationary states and their bifurcations.
+
+
                                                                        
 -----