Conference Agenda

Climate change is one of the major challenges facing politics, society and science today. Accurate predictions of the climate are indispensable for the development of reliable strategies for action. A clear indicator of the changing climate is the decrease in sea ice in the polar regions. Sea ice plays a key role in the climate system. Despite its importance, our understanding of mechanics and mathematics of sea ice remains incomplete, with fundamental open research questions.

One key aspect is the choice of sea-ice rheology, which determines the mechanical response of sea ice to external forces. While several models have been proposed, there is an ongoing debate about which is most appropriate and how to incorporate uncertainties and complexities such as plastic deformation. Another challenge is the development of efficient numerical methods for simulating sea-ice dynamics. Current methods are often computationally expensive and cannot fully capture sea-ice physics, leading to large uncertainties in model predictions. Finally a rigorous mathematical theory for the sea-ice equations is currently lacking. While progress has been made in understanding the mathematical structure of sea-ice models, there are still many open questions about the existence and uniqueness of solutions, the role of boundary conditions and the stability of numerical schemes.

This session brings together researchers from pure and applied mathematics, as well as from various fields of engineering, to discuss recent advances and challenges between the different disciplines. By fostering collaboration and exchange of ideas, we aim to improve our understanding of this complex material and to contribute to the development of more accurate and reliable models for predicting sea ice in a changing climate.