MOTIF ICE-5G Data (v1.1)

Note: ICE-5G v1.1 has been superseded by ICE-5G v1.2,

but the PMIP2/MOTIF participants absolutely have to use the 1.1 version!

What is ICE-5G (VM2)?

ICE-5G is a new global ice sheet reconstruction produced by W.R Peltier of the Department of Physics in the University of Toronto, Canada.

The model differs significantly from the previous version (ICE-4G and see also PMIP newsletter 3) at all Northern Hemisphere locations that were glaciated at Last Glacial Maximum. These locations include all of northwestern Europe/Eurasia, the British Isles, Greenland and the North American continent.

The VM2 designation refers to the radial variation of viscosity in the sub-lithospheric mantle.

The files available here pertain to ICE-5G (VM2) Version 1.1.

Using ICE-5G in MOTIF

The data files available on this page, that have to be used for MOTIF, are from the Version 1.1 of ICE-5G.

To implement this boundary condition in your model, please follow carefully the directions given in the old PMIP newsletter 3.

Credits and references

All papers that employ the ICE-5G reconstruction should reference the following publication in which the complete model is first described:

Prior publications describing the detailed analysis which has led to the modifications of the ice-sheet topography in the individual geographic regions are as follows:

• The British Isles:
  
  W.R. Peltier, I. Shennan, R. Drummond and B. Horton, 2002.
  On the postglacial isostatic adjustment of the British Isles and the shallow viscoelastic structure of the Earth.
  Geophys. J. Int. 148,443-475.
  
  
• Greenland:
  
  Tarasov, Lev and W.R Peltier, 2002.
  Greenland glacial history and local geodynamic consequences.
  Geophysical J. Int. 150, 198-229.
  
  
• North America:
  
  Peltier, W.R, 2002. Global glacial isostatic adjustment: palaeogeodetic and space-geodetic tests of the ICE-4G (VM2) model.
  J. Quat. Sci. 17, 491-510.
  
  
• Northwestern Europe/Eurasia:
  
  The new results for this region are described for the first time in Peltier (2004) and rely in large part on the ice-margins obtained in the QUEEN project sponsored by the European Science Foundation.
  

The 5-minute topography is based on a dataset for the present-day topography from the January 1994 NOAA/NGDC Digital Terrain Models (Terrainbase) collection. Note that it has been recently superceded by ETOPO2 which has 2-minute resolution.

Note: details about the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment can be found on the GRACE web site.

Data files

The data files are provided in netCDF format, and follow the CF (Climate and Forecast) metadata convention. Each file contains a topography (orog) and an ice-mask (sftgif) variable.

If you have technical questions about the data files, please get in touch with Rosemarie Drummond and Jean-Yves Peterschmitt.

ICE-5G, ICE5G or 'ICE 5G'?

For people who care about things such as consistency and try to be friendly with web indexing sites and robots, let us say that we should only use ICE-5G (see the '-' between ICE and 5G?)when we are referring to this global ice sheet reconstruction! :)