This session will provide a forum for assessing the challenges confronting the glaciological community if meaningful projections of future sea-level rise as to be made for the next Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC). Several international efforts are underway to determine how current and projected warming around the globe will translate into ice loss and and sea-level rise. However, many questions still surround how the cryosphere will respond to current and future climate forcing. This session solicits studies that explore and improve predictions of the glaciological contribution to sea level rise and, for example, we encourage reports on progress of the ice2sea and SeaRISE efforts.

Themes that will be explored include new parameterizations of key ice-sheet process affecting mass loss (for instance, calving, basal lubrication and grounding-line retreat); surface mass balance projections available from regional and global climate modelling; the influencing of changing interactions with the oceans; ice sheet model validation and initiialization; challenges in the modelling the contribution of ice caps and valley glaciers; initial results from model intercomparison exercises; reconciling observation-based assessments of the current state of balance of the ice sheets and its variability over the recent past.