Results from phase one of CalvingMIP:

The implementation of ice shelf calving in numerical ice models is a recent development in the field of cryospheric modelling. As roughly half of Antarctica's ice mass loss is due to calving a thorough understanding of the process is required to make accurate predictions of the future Antarctic mass balance. As yet, there has been no comprehensive investigation into the capabilities and robustness of these models for simulating the complicated physical process that is ice shelf calving.

CalvingMIP is an ongoing model intercomparison project that seeks to address this with a series of experiments and tests of increasing complexity, starting from simplified, idealised simulations before expanding to real world predictions. We make a clear distinction between calving algorithms (how a model numerically represents the physical process of ice calving) and calving laws (how much ice should calve at a given time). The recently completed phase one of CalvingMIP focussed on calving laws with the next phase investigating calving laws. Results from phase one are shown from ten different modelling groups across the cryospheric community.