The Symposium on Ice and Climate Modeling was staged by the International Glaciological Society (IGS) with the co-sponsorship of the American Meteorological Society to bring glaciologists into direct contact with modelers of the Earth’s climates during interglacials (such as the present) and glacial episodes. The purpose of mutual familiarization was served by reviews of the hierarchies which now exist for models of atmosphere, ocean, and climate. These reviews emphasized the actual or potential uses of ice data and parameterizations, and both general and specific aspects of coupling and sensitivity testing. The glaciologists in their turn reviewed the problems of exploring different ice forms and simulating their responses to climatic forcing. Interspersed with the didactic presentations important new results were reported. The most significant concerned atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide deduced from ice core analyses, which were put into a wider context by a new interpretation of the ocean as a chemical system.

The presentations and discussions highlighted a wide range of problems ripe for collaborative study. Topics recommended for priority attention include contemporaneous changes in the properties of ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, links between weather sequences and the stable isotope contents of polar precipitation, systematic intercomparisons of a wide range of model results, and the construction of intermediate-complexity sea-ice models for use in climate simulations.