Agenda

The full agenda with times, presenters, and abstracts can be found here

Plan to arrive Monday, September 26 for dinner and socializing; dinner is included in the registration fee and we ask for a small donation to cover drinks. The WAIS Workshop is 2½ days, concluding with lunch on Thursday, September 29. We will have around 40-50 talks that cover all aspects of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet system, including research from glaciologists, oceanographers, atmospheric scientists, biologists, computer scientists, and engineers at all career stages. We also enourage abstracts that discuss relevant aspects of communicating WAIS science beyond the research community as well as ideas to improve the diversity, inclusion, and equity of our field. Following each set of oral presentations, a panel of the session’s speakers and a moderator will lead an open discussion about the general theme, and examine what the significance of new insights presented in the talks is for the West Antarctic system. For 2021, sessions themes will include:

  • Observational and modeling gaps. Research that highlights data gaps that limit our ability to advance our understanding of any or all components of the Antarctic marine ice-sheet systems. What are the community needs for future satellite-, airborne-, ground-, and ship-based measurements? How do we access and analyze the growing volume of model output?
  • Improving predictability. Research that aims to improve our ability to predict or understanding present and future behavior of ice sheets, ice shelves, and the surrounding ice-ocean system. We seek process modeling contributions as well as observation-driven analysis for model refinement and contextualization. The session is not limited to ice behavior, but rather is open to the predictability of driving processes and any other component of the system as well.
  • Atmospheric and oceanic drivers. New discoveries and insights relating to atmospheric drivers of change (such as surface mass balance, firn processes, extraordinary snow events, atmospheric rivers), oceanic drivers of change (such as grounding zone processes, ice-shelf stability, sea ice conditions, sub-ice-shelf processes), and feedbacks within the atmospheric-ice-ocean system.
  • Marine ice sheet sensitivity in the climate system. Research that highlights and/or integrates our evolving understanding of ice-sheet response to past, present, and future climate forcing, ice dynamics, and biogeochemical systems. We welcome submissions that include studies of ice cores, sediment cores, geology, topography, sub-/en-/supra-glacial hydrology, geomorphology, numerical models, and more.
  • Antarctic Open Science. What does “open science” mean for the WAIS community? How do we achieve open science at the end of the Earth to leverage existing datasets, modeling frameworks, and model outputs to accelerate our science? What should our open science ecosystem look like, from proposal development to data collection and analysis to conference presentations, publication, and beyond? What are key technical, social, financial, or other barriers we encounter to adopt open science practices in our field? Do we need to rethink the “slide deck” model of conferences like WAIS Workshop to foster our open science goals? We seek contributions that identify concrete, actionable directions on which the community can build change and that explore the capabilities and challenges of open scientific collaboration.
  • WAIS and the Community. Actionable science requires civic engagement and co-production of knowledge with people out the confines of academic and research institutions. We week contributions that describe efforts to provide insight on and examples of community development that mutually benefit all parties involved as well as contributions that promote the development of inclusive and equitable research and learning spaces.

In addition to talks, WAIS Workshop will have space for posters. There will be an opportunity to give a very brief overview of a poster topic to the audience just prior to the poster sessions. Posters have historically received a great deal of attention at WAIS Workshops.