6 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
- ItemProjecting Antarctica's contribution to future sea level rise from basal ice shelf melt using linear response functions of 16 ice sheet models (LARMIP-2)(Göttingen : Copernicus Publ., 2020) Levermann, Anders; Winkelmann, Ricarda; Albrecht, Torsten; Goelzer, Heiko; Golledge, Nicholas R.; Greve, Ralf; Huybrechts, Philippe; Jordan, Jim; Leguy, Gunter; Martin, Daniel; Morlighem, Mathieu; Pattyn, Frank; Pollard, David; Quiquet, Aurelien; Rodehacke, Christian; Seroussi, Helene; Sutter, Johannes; Zhang, Tong; Van Breedam, Jonas; Calov, Reinhard; DeConto, Robert; Dumas, Christophe; Garbe, Julius; Gudmundsson, G. Hilmar; Hoffman, Matthew J.; Humbert, Angelika; Kleiner, Thomas; Lipscomb, William H.; Meinshausen, Malte; Ng, Esmond; Nowicki, Sophie M.J.; Perego, Mauro; Price, Stephen F.; Saito, Fuyuki; Schlegel, Nicole-Jeanne; Sun, Sainan; van de Wal, Roderik S.W.The sea level contribution of the Antarctic ice sheet constitutes a large uncertainty in future sea level projections. Here we apply a linear response theory approach to 16 state-of-the-art ice sheet models to estimate the Antarctic ice sheet contribution from basal ice shelf melting within the 21st century. The purpose of this computation is to estimate the uncertainty of Antarctica's future contribution to global sea level rise that arises from large uncertainty in the oceanic forcing and the associated ice shelf melting. Ice shelf melting is considered to be a major if not the largest perturbation of the ice sheet's flow into the ocean. However, by computing only the sea level contribution in response to ice shelf melting, our study is neglecting a number of processes such as surface-mass-balance-related contributions. In assuming linear response theory, we are able to capture complex temporal responses of the ice sheets, but we neglect any self-dampening or self-amplifying processes. This is particularly relevant in situations in which an instability is dominating the ice loss. The results obtained here are thus relevant, in particular wherever the ice loss is dominated by the forcing as opposed to an internal instability, for example in strong ocean warming scenarios. In order to allow for comparison the methodology was chosen to be exactly the same as in an earlier study (Levermann et al., 2014) but with 16 instead of 5 ice sheet models. We include uncertainty in the atmospheric warming response to carbon emissions (full range of CMIP5 climate model sensitivities), uncertainty in the oceanic transport to the Southern Ocean (obtained from the time-delayed and scaled oceanic subsurface warming in CMIP5 models in relation to the global mean surface warming), and the observed range of responses of basal ice shelf melting to oceanic warming outside the ice shelf cavity. This uncertainty in basal ice shelf melting is then convoluted with the linear response functions of each of the 16 ice sheet models to obtain the ice flow response to the individual global warming path. The model median for the observational period from 1992 to 2017 of the ice loss due to basal ice shelf melting is 10.2 mm, with a likely range between 5.2 and 21.3 mm. For the same period the Antarctic ice sheet lost mass equivalent to 7.4mm of global sea level rise, with a standard deviation of 3.7mm (Shepherd et al., 2018) including all processes, especially surface-mass-balance changes. For the unabated warming path, Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5), we obtain a median contribution of the Antarctic ice sheet to global mean sea level rise from basal ice shelf melting within the 21st century of 17 cm, with a likely range (66th percentile around the mean) between 9 and 36 cm and a very likely range (90th percentile around the mean) between 6 and 58 cm. For the RCP2.6 warming path, which will keep the global mean temperature below 2 °C of global warming and is thus consistent with the Paris Climate Agreement, the procedure yields a median of 13 cm of global mean sea level contribution. The likely range for the RCP2.6 scenario is between 7 and 24 cm, and the very likely range is between 4 and 37 cm. The structural uncertainties in the method do not allow for an interpretation of any higher uncertainty percentiles.We provide projections for the five Antarctic regions and for each model and each scenario separately. The rate of sea level contribution is highest under the RCP8.5 scenario. The maximum within the 21st century of the median value is 4 cm per decade, with a likely range between 2 and 9 cm per decade and a very likely range between 1 and 14 cm per decade. © Author(s) 2020.
- ItemStabilizing the West Antarctic Ice Sheet by surface mass deposition(Washington, DC [u.a.] : Assoc., 2019) Feldmann, Johannes; Levermann, Anders; Mengel, MatthiasThere is evidence that a self-sustaining ice discharge from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has started, potentially leading to its disintegration. The associated sea level rise of more than 3m would pose a serious challenge to highly populated areas including metropolises such as Calcutta, Shanghai, New York City, and Tokyo. Here, we show that the WAIS may be stabilized through mass deposition in coastal regions around Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. In our numerical simulations, a minimum of 7400 Gt of additional snowfall stabilizes the flow if applied over a short period of 10 years onto the region (−2 mm year−1 sea level equivalent). Mass deposition at a lower rate increases the intervention time and the required total amount of snow. We find that the precise conditions of such an operation are crucial, and potential benefits need to be weighed against environmental hazards, future risks, and enormous technical challenges. Copyright © 2019 The Authors,
- ItemGlacial-cycle simulations of the Antarctic Ice Sheet with the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM) – Part 1: Boundary conditions and climatic forcing(Katlenburg-Lindau : Copernicus, 2020) Albrecht, Torsten; Winkelmann, Ricarda; Levermann, AndersSimulations of the glacial–interglacial history of the Antarctic Ice Sheet provide insights into dynamic threshold behavior and estimates of the ice sheet's contributions to global sea-level changes for the past, present and future. However, boundary conditions are weakly constrained, in particular at the interface of the ice sheet and the bedrock. Also climatic forcing covering the last glacial cycles is uncertain, as it is based on sparse proxy data. We use the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM) to investigate the dynamic effects of different choices of input data, e.g., for modern basal heat flux or reconstructions of past changes of sea level and surface temperature. As computational resources are limited, glacial-cycle simulations are performed using a comparably coarse model grid of 16 km and various parameterizations, e.g., for basal sliding, iceberg calving, or for past variations in precipitation and ocean temperatures. In this study we evaluate the model's transient sensitivity to corresponding parameter choices and to different boundary conditions over the last two glacial cycles and provide estimates of involved uncertainties. We also discuss isolated and combined effects of climate and sea-level forcing. Hence, this study serves as a “cookbook” for the growing community of PISM users and paleo-ice sheet modelers in general. For each of the different model uncertainties with regard to climatic forcing, ice and Earth dynamics, and basal processes, we select one representative model parameter that captures relevant uncertainties and motivates corresponding parameter ranges that bound the observed ice volume at present. The four selected parameters are systematically varied in a parameter ensemble analysis, which is described in a companion paper.
- ItemA simple equation for the melt elevation feedback of ice sheets(Katlenburg-Lindau : European Geosciences Union, 2016) Levermann, Anders; Winkelmann, RicardaIn recent decades, the Greenland Ice Sheet has been losing mass and has thereby contributed to global sea-level rise. The rate of ice loss is highly relevant for coastal protection worldwide. The ice loss is likely to increase under future warming. Beyond a critical temperature threshold, a meltdown of the Greenland Ice Sheet is induced by the self-enforcing feedback between its lowering surface elevation and its increasing surface mass loss: the more ice that is lost, the lower the ice surface and the warmer the surface air temperature, which fosters further melting and ice loss. The computation of this rate so far relies on complex numerical models which are the appropriate tools for capturing the complexity of the problem. By contrast we aim here at gaining a conceptual understanding by deriving a purposefully simple equation for the self-enforcing feedback which is then used to estimate the melt time for different levels of warming using three observable characteristics of the ice sheet itself and its surroundings. The analysis is purely conceptual in nature. It is missing important processes like ice dynamics for it to be useful for applications to sea-level rise on centennial timescales, but if the volume loss is dominated by the feedback, the resulting logarithmic equation unifies existing numerical simulations and shows that the melt time depends strongly on the level of warming with a critical slowdown near the threshold: the median time to lose 10 % of the present-day ice volume varies between about 3500 years for a temperature level of 0.5 °C above the threshold and 500 years for 5 °C. Unless future observations show a significantly higher melting sensitivity than currently observed, a complete meltdown is unlikely within the next 2000 years without significant ice-dynamical contributions.
- ItemSimilitude of ice dynamics against scaling of geometry and physical parameters(München : European Geopyhsical Union, 2016) Feldmann, Johannes; Levermann, AndersThe concept of similitude is commonly employed in the fields of fluid dynamics and engineering but rarely used in cryospheric research. Here we apply this method to the problem of ice flow to examine the dynamic similitude of isothermal ice sheets in shallow-shelf approximation against the scaling of their geometry and physical parameters. Carrying out a dimensional analysis of the stress balance we obtain dimensionless numbers that characterize the flow. Requiring that these numbers remain the same under scaling we obtain conditions that relate the geometric scaling factors, the parameters for the ice softness, surface mass balance and basal friction as well as the ice-sheet intrinsic response time to each other. We demonstrate that these scaling laws are the same for both the (two-dimensional) flow-line case and the three-dimensional case. The theoretically predicted ice-sheet scaling behavior agrees with results from numerical simulations that we conduct in flow-line and three-dimensional conceptual setups. We further investigate analytically the implications of geometric scaling of ice sheets for their response time. With this study we provide a framework which, under several assumptions, allows for a fundamental comparison of the ice-dynamic behavior across different scales. It proves to be useful in the design of conceptual numerical model setups and could also be helpful for designing laboratory glacier experiments. The concept might also be applied to real-world systems, e.g., to examine the response times of glaciers, ice streams or ice sheets to climatic perturbations.
- ItemThe role of history and strength of the oceanic forcing in sea level projections from Antarctica with the Parallel Ice Sheet Model(Katlenburg-Lindau : Copernicus, 2020) Reese, Ronja; Levermann, Anders; Albrecht, Torsten; Seroussi, Hélène; Winkelmann, RicardaMass loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet constitutes the largest uncertainty in projections of future sea level rise. Ocean-driven melting underneath the floating ice shelves and subsequent acceleration of the inland ice streams are the major reasons for currently observed mass loss from Antarctica and are expected to become more important in the future. Here we show that for projections of future mass loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet, it is essential (1) to better constrain the sensitivity of sub-shelf melt rates to ocean warming and (2) to include the historic trajectory of the ice sheet. In particular, we find that while the ice sheet response in simulations using the Parallel Ice Sheet Model is comparable to the median response of models in three Antarctic Ice Sheet Intercomparison projects – initMIP, LARMIP-2 and ISMIP6 – conducted with a range of ice sheet models, the projected 21st century sea level contribution differs significantly depending on these two factors. For the highest emission scenario RCP8.5, this leads to projected ice loss ranging from 1.4 to 4.0 cm of sea level equivalent in simulations in which ISMIP6 ocean forcing drives the PICO ocean box model where parameter tuning leads to a comparably low sub-shelf melt sensitivity and in which no surface forcing is applied. This is opposed to a likely range of 9.1 to 35.8 cm using the exact same initial setup, but emulated from the LARMIP-2 experiments with a higher melt sensitivity, even though both projects use forcing from climate models and melt rates are calibrated with previous oceanographic studies. Furthermore, using two initial states, one with a previous historic simulation from 1850 to 2014 and one starting from a steady state, we show that while differences between the ice sheet configurations in 2015 seem marginal at first sight, the historic simulation increases the susceptibility of the ice sheet to ocean warming, thereby increasing mass loss from 2015 to 2100 by 5 % to 50 %. Hindcasting past ice sheet changes with numerical models would thus provide valuable tools to better constrain projections. Our results emphasize that the uncertainty that arises from the forcing is of the same order of magnitude as the ice dynamic response for future sea level projections.