The picture of a future clouded by climate change is getting clearer, thanks to a project led by Deborah Sulsky, professor emerita in the UNM Department of Mathematics & Statistics. Sulsky leads a team that has been awarded a five-year $3.3 million grant as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s efforts to improve its Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM).

The collaborative project, titled Improved Coupled Climate Simulations in E3SM Through Enhanced Sea‐Ice Mechanics, includes researchers from Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Nebraska. It’s one of seven projects to get a share of the DOE’s $70 million funding. Sulsky hopes to develop a better method for gauging the effects of sea ice as a step toward a more accurate climate change predictive model.