iC3: Centre for ice, Cryosphere, Carbon and Climate

Funded by the Norwegian Research Council through it’s Centres of Excellence funding scheme, iC3, officially started on the 1st July, 2023. The Centre is led and hosted by the Department of Geosciences at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, and is partnered with The Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) and NORCE.

Our goal

iC3 will carry out an unprecedented research endeavour spanning both the Arctic and Antarctic to fill a major research gap in polar science by quantifying the future impact of ice sheet change on Earth’s carbon cycle and polar marine ecosystems over policy-relevant timescales.

To achieve this, iC3’s team will work across disciplines and unite complementary world-leading expertise with a wide network of international collaborators and our three partners: UiT, NPI, and NORCE.

Research

iC3’s integrated, interdisciplinary hub of experts studying the cryosphere, oceans, atmosphere and geosphere, will work together to address the hypothesis that changing ice sheets profoundly impact the Earth’s carbon cycle.

The Centre is organized into 5 Research Units (RUs), which traverse ice-to-ocean domains at both poles, and two Impact Themes (iTs) dedicated to innovation, technology and training future leaders.

NORCE - RU5: Global carbon futures

NORCE contributes to Research Unit 5 "Global Carbon Futures". We will further develop the Norwegian Earth System model NorESM, to include a fully coupled Antarctic Ice Sheet. This will mean a lot of technical development work.The model will be used to assess what the impact of ice sheet changes is on the global climate and carbon cycle.