668 research outputs found
Соціально-правова та етична природа мусульманської сім‘ї
Relative sea-level variations during the late Pleistocene can only be
reconstructed with the knowledge of ice-sheet history. On the other hand, the
knowledge of regional and global relative sea-level variations is necessary
to learn about the changes in ice volume. Overcoming this problem of
circularity demands a fully coupled system where ice sheets and sea level
vary consistently in space and time and dynamically affect each other. Here
we present results for the past 410 000 years (410 kyr) from the coupling
of a set of 3-D ice-sheet-shelf models to a global sea-level model, which is
based on the solution of the gravitationally self-consistent sea-level
equation. The sea-level model incorporates the glacial isostatic adjustment
feedbacks for a Maxwell viscoelastic and rotating Earth model with coastal
migration. Ice volume is computed with four 3-D ice-sheet-shelf models for
North America, Eurasia, Greenland and Antarctica. Using an inverse approach,
ice volume and temperature are derived from a benthic δ18O stacked
record. The derived surface-air temperature anomaly is added to the
present-day climatology to simulate glacial–interglacial changes in
temperature and hence ice volume. The ice-sheet thickness variations are then
forwarded to the sea-level model to compute the bedrock deformation, the
change in sea-surface height and thus the relative sea-level change. The
latter is then forwarded to the ice-sheet models. To quantify the impact of
relative sea-level variations on ice-volume evolution, we have performed
coupled and uncoupled simulations. The largest differences of ice-sheet
thickness change occur at the edges of the ice sheets, where relative sea-level
change significantly departs from the ocean-averaged sea-level variations
Simulation of a fully coupled 3D glacial isostatic adjustment – ice sheet model for the Antarctic ice sheet over a glacial cycle
Glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) has a stabilizing effect on the evolution of the Antarctic ice sheet by reducing the grounding line migration following ice melt. The timescale and strength of this feedback depends on the spatially varying viscosity of the Earth's mantle. Most studies assume a relatively long and laterally homogenous response time of the bedrock. However, the mantle viscosity is spatially variable, with a high mantle viscosity beneath East Antarctica and a low mantle viscosity beneath West Antarctica. For this study, we have developed a new method to couple a 3D GIA model and an ice sheet model to study the interaction between the solid Earth and the Antarctic ice sheet during the last glacial cycle. With this method, the ice sheet model and GIA model exchange ice thickness and bedrock elevation during a fully coupled transient experiment. The feedback effect is taken into account with a high temporal resolution, where the coupling time steps between the ice sheet and GIA model are 5000 years over the glaciation phase and vary between 500 and 1000 years over the deglaciation phase of the last glacial cycle. During each coupling time step, the bedrock elevation is adjusted at every ice sheet model time step, and the deformation is computed for a linearly changing ice load. We applied the method using the ice sheet model ANICE and a 3D GIA finite element model. We used results from a regional seismic model for Antarctica embedded in the global seismic model SMEAN2 to determine the patterns in the mantle viscosity. The results of simulations over the last glacial cycle show that differences in mantle viscosity of an order of magnitude can lead to differences in the grounding line position up to 700 km and to differences in ice thickness of the order of 2 km for the present day near the Ross Embayment. These results underline and quantify the importance of including local GIA feedback effects in ice sheet models when simulating the Antarctic ice sheet evolution over the last glacial cycle.</p
Late Pleistocene glacial terminations accelerated by proglacial lakes
During the glacial cycles of the past 800 000 years, Eurasia and North America were periodically covered by large ice sheets, causing up to 100 m of sea-level change. While Late Pleistocene glacial cycles typically lasted 80 000–120 000 years, the termination phases were completed in only 10 000 years. During these glacial terminations, the North American and Eurasian ice sheets retreated, which created large proglacial lakes in front of the ice-sheet margin. Proglacial lakes accelerate deglaciation as they facilitate the formation of ice shelves at the southern margins of the North American and Eurasian ice sheets. These ice shelves are characterized by basal melting, low surface elevations, and negligible friction at the base. Here, we use an ice-sheet model to quantify the (combined) effects of proglacial lakes on Late Pleistocene glacial terminations by examining their interplay with glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) and basal sliding. We find that proglacial lakes accelerate the deglaciation of ice sheets mainly because there is an absence of basal friction underneath ice shelves. If friction underneath grounded ice is applied to floating ice, full deglaciation is postponed by a few millennia, resulting in more ice remaining during interglacial periods and no extensive ice shelves forming. Additionally, the large uncertainty in melt rates underneath lacustrine ice shelves translates to an uncertainty in the timing of the termination of up to a millennium.
Proglacial lakes are created by depressions in the landscape that remain after an ice sheet has retreated. The depth, size, and timing of proglacial lakes depend on the rate of bedrock rebound. We find that if bedrock rebounds within a few centuries (rather than a few millennia), the mass loss rate of the ice sheet is substantially reduced. This is because fast bedrock rebound prevents the formation of extensive proglacial lakes. Additionally, a decrease in ice thickness is partly compensated for by faster bedrock rebound, resulting in a higher surface elevation; lower temperatures; and a higher surface mass balance, which delays deglaciation. We find that a very long bedrock relaxation time does not substantially affect terminations, but it may lead to a delayed onset of the next glacial period. This is because inception regions, such as northwestern Canada, remain below sea level throughout the preceding interglacial period.</p
Compensating errors in inversions for subglacial bed roughness: same steady state, different dynamic response
Subglacial bed roughness is one of the main factors
controlling the rate of future Antarctic ice-sheet retreat and also one of
the most uncertain. A common technique to constrain the bed roughness using
ice-sheet models is basal inversion, tuning the roughness to reproduce the
observed present-day ice-sheet geometry and/or surface velocity. However,
many other factors affecting ice-sheet evolution, such as the englacial
temperature and viscosity, the surface and basal mass balance, and the
subglacial topography, also contain substantial uncertainties. Using a basal
inversion technique intrinsically causes any errors in these other
quantities to lead to compensating errors in the inverted bed roughness.
Using a set of idealised-geometry experiments, we quantify these
compensating errors and investigate their effect on the dynamic response of
the ice sheet to a prescribed forcing. We find that relatively small errors
in ice viscosity and subglacial topography require substantial compensating
errors in the bed roughness in order to produce the same steady-state ice
sheet, obscuring the realistic spatial variability in the bed roughness.
When subjected to a retreat-inducing forcing, we find that these different
parameter combinations, which per definition of the inversion procedure
result in the same steady-state geometry, lead to a rate of ice volume loss
that can differ by as much as a factor of 2. This implies that ice-sheet
models that use basal inversion to initialise their model state can still
display a substantial model bias despite having an initial state which is
close to the observations.</p
Mapping technique of climate fields between GCM's and ice models
Here, we present a mapping method OBLIMAP, which projects and interpolates fields like surface temperature, surface mass balance, and surface height between a geographical based coordinate system of a General Circulation Model (GCM) and a rectangular based Ice Model (IM). We derive an oblique stereographic projection and its inverse, which holds for any area at the Earth's surface, and which can be combined with two different interpolation methods. The first one is suited to interpolate the projected fields of a coarse GCM grid on a fine meshed IM grid. The second one is appropriate for the opposite case. Both grids are allowed to be arbitrary and irregularly spaced. Therefore the OBLIMAP technique is suitable for any GCM-IM combination. After a first scan of the GCM grid coordinates and the specification of the IM grid, fast mapping of various fields is possible. To and fro (GCM-IM-GCM) mapping tests with the Climate Community System Model (CCSM) at T42 resolution (~313 km) and the Regional Atmospheric Climate Model (RACMO) at ~11 km and ~55 km, show average temperature differences of less than 0.1 K with small standard deviations. OBLIMAP, available at GMD, is an accurate, robust and well-documented mapping method for coupling an IM with a GCM or to map state of the art initial and forcing fields available at geographical coordinates to any local IM grid with an optimal centered oblique projection. Currently, the oblique stereographic and the oblique Lambert azimuthal equal-area projections for both the sphere and the ellipsoid are implemented in OBLIMAP
Coupling of climate models and ice sheet models by surface mass balance gradients: application to the Greenland Ice Sheet
It is notoriously difficult to couple surface mass balance (SMB) results from climate models to the changing geometry of an ice sheet model. This problem is traditionally avoided by using only accumulation from a climate model, and parameterizing the meltwater run-off as a function of temperature, which is often related to surface elevation (<i>H</i><sub>s</sub>). In this study, we propose a new strategy to calculate SMB, to allow a direct adjustment of SMB to a change in ice sheet topography and/or a change in climate forcing. This method is based on elevational gradients in the SMB field as computed by a regional climate model. Separate linear relations are derived for ablation and accumulation, using pairs of <i>H</i><sub>s</sub> and SMB within a minimum search radius. The continuously adjusting SMB forcing is consistent with climate model forcing fields, also for initially non-glaciated areas in the peripheral areas of an ice sheet. When applied to an asynchronous coupled ice sheet – climate model setup, this method circumvents traditional temperature lapse rate assumptions. Here we apply it to the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS). Experiments using both steady-state forcing and glacial-interglacial forcing result in realistic ice sheet reconstructions
On the Cause of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition
The Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT), where the Pleistocene glacial cycles changed from 41 to ∼100 kyr periodicity, is one of the most intriguing unsolved issues in the field of paleoclimatology. Over the course of over four decades of research, several different physical mechanisms have been proposed to explain the MPT, involving non-linear feedbacks between ice sheets and the global climate, the solid Earth, ocean circulation, and the carbon cycle. Here, we review these different mechanisms, comparing how each of them relates to the others, and to the currently available observational evidence. Based on this discussion, we identify the most important gaps in our current understanding of the MPT. We discuss how new model experiments, which focus on the quantitative differences between the different physical mechanisms, could help fill these gaps. The results of those experiments could help interpret available proxy evidence, as well as new evidence that is expected to become available
Climate model boundary conditions for four Cretaceous time slices
International audienceGeneral circulation models (GCMs) are useful tools for investigating the characteristics and dynamics of past climates. Understanding of past climates contributes significantly to our overall understanding of Earth's climate system. One of the most time consuming, and often daunting, tasks facing the paleoclimate modeler, particularly those without a geological background, is the production of surface boundary conditions for past time periods. These boundary conditions consist of, at a minimum, continental configurations derived from plate tectonic modeling, topography, bathymetry, and a vegetation distribution. Typically, each researcher develops a unique set of boundary conditions for use in their simulations. Thus, unlike simulations of modern climate, basic assumptions in paleo surface boundary conditions can vary from researcher to researcher. This makes comparisons between results from multiple researchers difficult and, thus, hinders the integration of studies across the broader community. Unless special changes to surface conditions are warranted, researcher dependent boundary conditions are not the most efficient way to proceed in paleoclimate investigations. Here we present surface boundary conditions (land-sea distribution, paleotopography, paleobathymetry, and paleovegetation distribution) for four Cretaceous time slices (120 Ma, 110 Ma, 90 Ma, and 70 Ma). These boundary conditions are modified from base datasets to be appropriate for incorporation into numerical studies of Earth's climate and are available in NetCDF format upon request from the lead author. The land-sea distribution, bathymetry, and topography are based on the 1°×1° (latitude × longitude) paleo Digital Elevation Models (paleoDEMs) of Christopher Scotese. Those paleoDEMs were adjusted using the paleogeographical reconstructions of Ronald Blakey (Northern Arizona University) and published literature and were then modified for use in GCMs. The paleovegetation distribution is based on published data and reconstructions and consultation with members of the paleobotanical community and is represented as generalized biomes that should be easily translatable to many vegetation-modeling schemes
Application of [email protected] simulations of paleoclimate as forcing for an ice-sheet model, ANICE2.1: set-up and benchmark experiments
Fully coupled ice-sheet–climate
modelling over 10 000–100 000-year timescales at high spatial and temporal
resolution remains beyond the capability of current computational systems.
Forcing an ice-sheet model with precalculated output from a general
circulation model (GCM) offers a middle ground, balancing the need to
accurately capture both long-term processes, in particular circulation-driven
changes in precipitation, and processes requiring a high spatial resolution
like ablation. Here, we present and evaluate a model set-up that forces the
ANICE 3-D thermodynamic ice-sheet–shelf model calculating the four large
continental ice sheets (Antarctica, Greenland, North America, and Eurasia)
with precalculated output from two steady-state simulations with the HadCM3
(GCM) using a so-called matrix method of coupling both components, whereby
simulations with various levels of pCO2 and ice-sheet
configuration are combined to form a time-continuous transient climate
forcing consistent with the modelled ice sheets. We address the difficulties
in downscaling low-resolution GCM output to the higher-resolution grid of an
ice-sheet model and account for differences between GCM and ice-sheet model
surface topography ranging from interglacial to glacial conditions. Although
the approach presented here can be applied to a matrix with any number of GCM
snapshots, we limited our experiments to a matrix of only two snapshots. As a
benchmark experiment to assess the validity of this model set-up, we perform
a simulation of the entire last glacial cycle from 120 kyr ago to present
day. The simulated eustatic sea-level drop at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM)
for the combined Antarctic, Greenland, Eurasian, and North American ice
sheets amounts to 100 m, in line with many other studies. The simulated ice
sheets at the LGM agree well with the ICE-5G reconstruction and the more
recent DATED-1 reconstruction in terms of total volume and geographical
location of the ice sheets. Moreover, modelled benthic oxygen isotope
abundance and the relative contributions from global ice volume and
deep-water temperature agree well with available data, as do surface
temperature histories for the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. This model
strategy can be used to create time-continuous ice-sheet distribution and
sea-level reconstructions for geological periods up to several million years
in duration, capturing climate-model-driven variations in the mass balance of
the ice sheet.</p
Uncertainties in long-term twenty-first century process-based coastal sea-level projections
Many processes affect sea level near the coast. In this paper, we discuss the major uncertainties in coastal sea-level projections from a process-based perspective, at different spatial and temporal scales, and provide an outlook on how these uncertainties may be reduced. Uncertainty in centennial global sea-level rise is dominated by the ice sheet contributions. Geographical variations in projected sea-level change arise mainly from dynamical patterns in the ocean response and other geophysical processes. Finally, the uncertainties in the short-duration extreme sea-level events are controlled by near coastal processes, storms and tides
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