18 research outputs found
The stability of present-day Antarctic grounding lines – Part 2: Onset of irreversible retreat of Amundsen Sea glaciers under current climate on centennial timescales cannot be excluded
Observations of ocean-driven grounding-line retreat in the Amundsen Sea Embayment in Antarctica raise the question of an imminent collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Here we analyse the committed evolution of Antarctic grounding lines under the present-day climate. To this aim, we first calibrate a sub-shelf melt parameterization, which is derived from an ocean box model, with observed and modelled melt sensitivities to ocean temperature changes, making it suitable for present-day simulations and future sea level projections. Using the new calibration, we run an ensemble of historical simulations from 1850 to 2015 with a state-of-the-art ice sheet model to create model instances of possible present-day ice sheet configurations. Then, we extend the simulations for another 10 000 years to investigate their evolution under constant present-day climate forcing and bathymetry. We test for reversibility of grounding-line movement in the case that large-scale retreat occurs. In the Amundsen Sea Embayment we find irreversible retreat of the Thwaites Glacier for all our parameter combinations and irreversible retreat of the Pine Island Glacier for some admissible parameter combinations. Importantly, an irreversible collapse in the Amundsen Sea Embayment sector is initiated at the earliest between 300 and 500 years in our simulations and is not inevitable yet – as also shown in our companion paper (Part 1, Hill et al., 2023). In other words, the region has not tipped yet. With the assumption of constant present-day climate, the collapse evolves on millennial timescales, with a maximum rate of 0.9 mm a−1 sea-level-equivalent ice volume loss. The contribution to sea level by 2300 is limited to 8 cm with a maximum rate of 0.4 mm a−1 sea-level-equivalent ice volume loss. Furthermore, when allowing ice shelves to regrow to their present geometry, we find that large-scale grounding-line retreat into marine basins upstream of the Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf and the western Siple Coast is reversible. Other grounding lines remain close to their current positions in all configurations under present-day climate
Global Tipping Points Report 2023: Ch1.2: Cryosphere tipping points.
Drastic changes in our planet’s frozen landscapes have occurred over recent decades, from Arctic sea ice decline and thawing of permafrost soils to polar amplification, the retreat of glaciers and ice loss from the ice sheets. In this chapter, we assess multiple lines of evidence for tipping points in the cryosphere – encompassing the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica, sea ice, mountain glaciers and permafrost – based on recent observations, palaeorecords, numerical modelling and theoretical understanding.
With about 1.2°C of global warming compared to pre-industrial levels, we are getting dangerously close to the temperature thresholds of some major tipping points for the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica. Crossing these would lock in unavoidable long-term global sea level rise of up to 10 metres. There is evidence for localised and regional tipping points for glaciers and permafrost and, while evidence for global-scale tipping dynamics in sea ice, glaciers and permafrost is limited, their decline will continue with unabated global warming.
Because of the long response times of these systems, some impacts of crossing potential tipping points will unfold over centuries to millennia. However, with the current trajectory of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and subsequent anthropogenic climate change, such largely irreversible changes might already have been triggered. These will cause far-reaching impacts for ecosystems and humans alike, threatening the livelihoods of millions of people, and will become more severe the further global warming progresses
PISM version as used in Garbe et al. (TC, 2023) publication
<p>This is the <a href="https://www.pism.io">PISM</a> code version used for the Antarctic Ice Sheet simulations published and discussed in</p><p><a href="https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-4571-2023">Garbe, J., Zeitz, M., Krebs-Kanzow, U., and Winkelmann, R. The evolution of future Antarctic surface melt using PISM-dEBM-simple. <i>The Cryosphere</i> <strong>17</strong>, 4571–4599, 2023.</a></p><p>The code is based on PISM release `v1.2`, but contains several improvements and modifications.</p><p>In case of questions, feel free to contact me at <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>.</p>
The evolution of future Antarctic surface melt using PISM-dEBM-simple
It is virtually certain that Antarctica's contribution to sea-level rise will increase with future warming, although competing mass balance processes hamper accurate quantification of the exact magnitudes. Today, ocean-induced melting underneath the floating ice shelves dominates mass losses, but melting at the surface will gain importance as global warming continues. Meltwater at the ice surface has crucial implications for the ice sheet's stability, as it increases the risk of hydrofracturing and ice-shelf collapse that could cause enhanced glacier outflow into the ocean. Simultaneously, positive feedbacks between ice and atmosphere can accelerate mass losses and increase the ice sheet's sensitivity to warming. However, due to long response times, it may take hundreds to thousands of years until the ice sheet fully adjusts to the environmental changes. Therefore, ice-sheet model simulations must be computationally fast and capture the relevant feedbacks, including the ones at the ice-atmosphere interface. Here we use the novel surface melt module dEBM-simple (a slightly modified version of the "simple"diurnal Energy Balance Model) coupled to the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM, together referred to as PISM-dEBM-simple) to estimate the impact of 21st-century atmospheric warming on Antarctic surface melt and ice dynamics. As an enhancement compared to the widely adopted positive degree-day (PDD) scheme, dEBM-simple includes an implicit diurnal cycle and computes melt not only from the temperature, but also from the influence of solar radiation and changes in ice albedo, thus accounting for the melt-albedo feedback. We calibrate PISM-dEBM-simple to reproduce historical and present-day Antarctic surface melt rates given by the regional atmospheric climate model RACMO2.3p2 and use the calibrated model to assess the range of possible future surface melt trajectories under Shared Socioeconomic Pathway SSP5-8.5 warming projections until the year 2100. To investigate the committed impacts of the enhanced surface melting on the ice-sheet dynamics, we extend the simulations under fixed climatological conditions until the ice sheet has reached a state close to equilibrium with its environment. Our findings reveal a substantial surface-melt-induced speed-up in ice flow associated with large-scale elevation reductions in sensitive ice-sheet regions, underscoring the critical role of self-reinforcing ice-sheet-atmosphere feedbacks in future mass losses and sea-level contribution from the Antarctic Ice Sheet on centennial to millennial timescales
The hysteresis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet
More than half of Earth’s freshwater resources are held by the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which thus represents by far the largest potential source for global sea-level rise under future warming conditions1. Its long-term stability determines the fate of our coastal cities and cultural heritage. Feedbacks between ice, atmosphere, ocean, and the solid Earth give rise to potential nonlinearities in its response to temperature changes. So far, we are lacking a comprehensive stability analysis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet for different amounts of global warming. Here we show that the Antarctic Ice Sheet exhibits a multitude of temperature thresholds beyond which ice loss is irreversible. Consistent with palaeodata2 we find, using the Parallel Ice Sheet Model3,4,5, that at global warming levels around 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, West Antarctica is committed to long-term partial collapse owing to the marine ice-sheet instability. Between 6 and 9 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels, the loss of more than 70 per cent of the present-day ice volume is triggered, mainly caused by the surface elevation feedback. At more than 10 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels, Antarctica is committed to become virtually ice-free. The ice sheet’s temperature sensitivity is 1.3 metres of sea-level equivalent per degree of warming up to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, almost doubling to 2.4 metres per degree of warming between 2 and 6 degrees and increasing to about 10 metres per degree of warming between 6 and 9 degrees. Each of these thresholds gives rise to hysteresis behaviour: that is, the currently observed ice-sheet configuration is not regained even if temperatures are reversed to present-day levels. In particular, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet does not regrow to its modern extent until temperatures are at least one degree Celsius lower than pre-industrial levels. Our results show that if the Paris Agreement is not met, Antarctica’s long-term sea-level contribution will dramatically increase and exceed that of all other sources
Corrigendum: Exploring risks and benefits of overshooting a 1.5 °C carbon budget over space and time (2023 Environ. Res. Lett. 18 054015)
Exploring risks and benefits of overshooting a 1.5 °C carbon budget over space and time
Temperature targets of the Paris Agreement limit global net cumulative emissions to very tight carbon budgets. The possibility to overshoot the budget and offset near-term excess emissions by net-negative emissions is considered economically attractive as it eases near-term mitigation pressure. While potential side effects of carbon removal deployment are discussed extensively, the additional climate risks and the impacts and damages have attracted less attention. We link six models for an integrative analysis of the climatic, environmental and socio-economic consequences of temporarily overshooting a carbon budget consistent with the 1.5 °C temperature target along the cause-effect chain from emissions and carbon removals to climate risks and impact. Global climatic indicators such as CO _2 -concentration and mean temperature closely follow the carbon budget overshoot with mid-century peaks of 50 ppmv and 0.35 °C, respectively. Our findings highlight that investigating overshoot scenarios requires temporally and spatially differentiated analysis of climate, environmental and socioeconomic systems. We find persistent and spatially heterogeneous differences in the distribution of carbon across various pools, ocean heat content, sea-level rise as well as economic damages. Moreover, we find that key impacts, including degradation of marine ecosystem, heat wave exposure and economic damages, are more severe in equatorial areas than in higher latitudes, although absolute temperature changes being stronger in higher latitudes. The detrimental effects of a 1.5 °C warming and the additional effects due to overshoots are strongest in non-OECD countries (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). Constraining the overshoot inflates CO _2 prices, thus shifting carbon removal towards early afforestation while reducing the total cumulative deployment only slightly, while mitigation costs increase sharply in developing countries. Thus, scenarios with carbon budget overshoots can reverse global mean temperature increase but imply more persistent and geographically heterogeneous impacts. Overall, the decision about overshooting implies more severe trade-offs between mitigation and impacts in developing countries
The stability of present-day Antarctic grounding lines – Part 1: No indication of marine ice sheet instability in the current geometry
International audienceAbstract. Theoretical and numerical work has shown that under certain circumstances grounding lines of marine-type ice sheets can enter phases of irreversible advance and retreat driven by the marine ice sheet instability (MISI). Instances of such irreversible retreat have been found in several simulations of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. However, it has not been assessed whether the Antarctic grounding lines are already undergoing MISI in their current position. Here, we conduct a systematic numerical stability analysis using three state-of-the-art ice sheet models: Úa, Elmer/Ice, and the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM). For the first two models, we construct steady-state initial configurations whereby the simulated grounding lines remain at the observed present-day positions through time. The third model, PISM, uses a spin-up procedure and historical forcing such that its transient state is close to the observed one. To assess the stability of these simulated states, we apply short-term perturbations to submarine melting. Our results show that the grounding lines around Antarctica migrate slightly away from their initial position while the perturbation is applied, and they revert once the perturbation is removed. This indicates that present-day retreat of Antarctic grounding lines is not yet irreversible or self-sustained. However, our accompanying paper (Part 2, Reese et al., 2023a) shows that if the grounding lines retreated further inland, under present-day climate forcing, it may lead to the eventual irreversible collapse of some marine regions of West Antarctica
The stability of present-day Antarctic grounding lines – Part 1: No indication of marine ice sheet instability in the current geometry
International audienceAbstract. Theoretical and numerical work has shown that under certain circumstances grounding lines of marine-type ice sheets can enter phases of irreversible advance and retreat driven by the marine ice sheet instability (MISI). Instances of such irreversible retreat have been found in several simulations of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. However, it has not been assessed whether the Antarctic grounding lines are already undergoing MISI in their current position. Here, we conduct a systematic numerical stability analysis using three state-of-the-art ice sheet models: Úa, Elmer/Ice, and the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM). For the first two models, we construct steady-state initial configurations whereby the simulated grounding lines remain at the observed present-day positions through time. The third model, PISM, uses a spin-up procedure and historical forcing such that its transient state is close to the observed one. To assess the stability of these simulated states, we apply short-term perturbations to submarine melting. Our results show that the grounding lines around Antarctica migrate slightly away from their initial position while the perturbation is applied, and they revert once the perturbation is removed. This indicates that present-day retreat of Antarctic grounding lines is not yet irreversible or self-sustained. However, our accompanying paper (Part 2, Reese et al., 2023a) shows that if the grounding lines retreated further inland, under present-day climate forcing, it may lead to the eventual irreversible collapse of some marine regions of West Antarctica