Aspects of fine-tuning of the Higgs mass within finite field theories

We reanalyze the perturbative radiative corrections to the Higgs mass within the Standard Model in the light of the Taylor-Lagrange renormalization scheme. This scheme naturally leads to completely finite corrections, depending on an arbitrary scale. The formulation avoids very large individual corrections to the Higgs mass. This illustrates the fact that the so-called fine-tuning problem in the Standard Model is just an artifact of the regularization scheme. It should therefore not lead to any physical interpretation in terms of the energy scale at which new physics should show up, nor in terms of a new symmetry. We analyze the intrinsic physical scales relevant for the description of these radiative corrections.Comment: 9 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1011.174

Southern Ocean warming and Antarctic ice shelf melting in conditions plausible by late 23rd century in a high-end scenario

How much Antarctic ice shelf basal melt rates can increase in response to global warming remains an open question. Here we describe the response of the Southern Ocean and ice shelf cavities to an abrupt change to high-end atmospheric conditions plausible by the late 23rd century under the SSP5-8.5 scenario. To achieve this objective, we first present and evaluate a new 0.25∘ global configuration of the NEMO (Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean NEMO System Team, 2019) ocean and sea ice model. Our present-day simulations demonstrate good agreement with observational data for key variables such as temperature, salinity, and ice shelf melt rates, despite the remaining difficulties to simulate the interannual variability in the Amundsen Sea. The ocean response to the high-end atmospheric perturbation includes a strengthening and extension of the Ross and Weddell gyres and a quasi-disappearance of sea ice, with a subsequent decrease in production of High Salinity Shelf Water and increased intrusion of warmer water onto the continental shelves favoured by changes in baroclinic currents at the shelf break. We propose to classify the perturbed continental shelf as a “warm–fresh shelf”. This induces a substantial increase in ice shelf basal melt rates, particularly in the coldest seas, with a total basal mass loss rising from 1180 to 15 700 Gt yr−1 and an Antarctica averaged melt rate increasing from 0.8 to 10.6 m yr−1. In the perturbed simulation, most ice shelves around Antarctica experience conditions that are currently found in the Amundsen Sea, while the Amundsen Sea warms by 2 ∘C. These idealised projections can be used as a base to calibrate basal melt parameterisations used in long-term ice sheet projections.</p

Description of the resolution hierarchy of the global coupled HadGEM3-GC3.1 model as used in CMIP6 HighResMIP experiments

CMIP6 HighResMIP is a new experimental design for global climate model simulations that aims to assess the impact of model horizontal resolution on climate simulation fidelity. We describe a hierarchy of global coupled model resolutions based on the HadGEM3-GC3.1 model that range from an atmosphere-ocean resolution of 130 km-1° to 25 km-1/12°, all using the same forcings and initial conditions. In order to make such high resolution simulations possible, the experiments have a short 30 year spinup, followed by at least century-long simulations with both constant forcing (to assess drift and the focus of this work), and historic forcing. We assess the change in model biases as a function of both atmosphere and ocean resolution, together with the effectiveness and robustness of this new experimental design. We find reductions in the biases in top of atmosphere radiation components and cloud forcing. There are significant reductions in some common surface climate model biases as resolution is increased, particularly in the Atlantic for sea surface temperature and precipitation, primarily driven by increased ocean resolution. There is also a reduction in drift from the initial conditions both at the surface and in the deeper ocean at higher resolution. Using an eddy-present and eddy-rich ocean resolution enhances the strength of the North Atlantic ocean circulation (boundary currents, overturning circulation and heat transports), while an eddy-present ocean resolution has a considerably reduced Antarctic Circumpolar Current strength. All models have a reasonable representation of El Nino – Southern Oscillation. In general the biases present after 30 years of simulations do not change character markedly over longer timescales, justifying the experimental design

Drivers and Reversibility of Abrupt Ocean State Transitions in the Amundsen Sea, Antarctica

Ocean warming around Antarctica has the potential to trigger marine ice-sheet instabilities. It has been suggested that abrupt and irreversible cold-to-warm ocean tipping points may exist, with possible domino effect from ocean to ice-sheet tipping points. A 1/4° ocean model configuration of the Amundsen Sea sector is used to investigate the existence of ocean tipping points, their drivers, and their potential impact on ice-shelf basal melting. We apply idealized atmospheric perturbations of either heat, freshwater, or momentum fluxes, and we characterize the key physical processes at play in warm-to-cold and cold-to-warm climate transitions. Relatively weak perturbations of any of these fluxes are able to switch the Amundsen Sea to an intermittent or permanent cold state, that is, with ocean temperatures close to the surface freezing point and very low ice-shelf melt rate. The transitions are reversible, that is, canceling the atmospheric perturbation brings the ocean system back to its unperturbed state within a few decades. All the transitions are primarily driven by changes in surface buoyancy fluxes resulting from the freshwater flux perturbation or from modified net sea-ice production due to either heat flux or sea-ice advection anomalies. These changes affect the vertical ocean stratification over the continental shelf and thereby the eastward undercurrent at the shelf break, which both impact ice-shelf melting. As sea-ice induced deep convection is already quite limited in present-day conditions, surface buoyancy gain in a warmer climate has relatively little effect on deep ocean properties compared to colder climate conditions

An assessment of basal melt parameterisations for Antarctic ice shelves

Ocean-induced ice-shelf melt is one of the largest uncertainty factors in the Antarctic contribution to future sea-level rise. Several parameterisations exist, linking oceanic properties in front of the ice shelf to melt at the base of the ice shelf, to force ice-sheet models. Here, we assess the potential of a range of these existing basal melt parameterisations to emulate basal melt rates simulated by a cavity-resolving ocean model on the circum-Antarctic scale. To do so, we perform two cross-validations, over time and over ice shelves respectively, and re-tune the parameterisations in a perfect-model approach, to compare the melt rates produced by the newly tuned parameterisations to the melt rates simulated by the ocean model. We find that the quadratic dependence of melt to thermal forcing without dependency on the individual ice-shelf slope and the plume parameterisation yield the best compromise, in terms of integrated shelf melt and spatial patterns. The box parameterisation, which separates the sub-shelf circulation into boxes, the PICOP parameterisation, which combines the box and plume parameterisation, and quadratic parameterisations with dependency on the ice slope yield basal melt rates further from the model reference. The linear parameterisation cannot be recommended as the resulting integrated ice-shelf melt is comparably furthest from the reference. When using offshore hydrographic input fields in comparison to properties on the continental shelf, all parameterisations perform worse; however, the box and the slope-dependent quadratic parameterisations yield the comparably best results. In addition to the new tuning, we provide uncertainty estimates for the tuned parameters

Localized general vertical coordinates for quasi‐Eulerian ocean models: The Nordic overflows test‐case

A generalized methodology to deploy different types of vertical coordinate system in arbitrarily defined time-invariant local areas of quasi-Eulerian numerical ocean models is presented. After detailing its characteristics, we show how the general localization method can be used to improve the representation of the Nordic Seas overflows in the UK Met Office NEMO-based eddy-permitting global ocean configuration. Three z*-levels with partial steps configurations localizing different types of hybrid geopotential/terrain-following vertical coordinates in the proximity of the Greenland-Scotland ridge are implemented and compared against a control configuration. Experiments include a series of idealized and realistic numerical simulations where the skill of the models in computing pressure forces, reducing spurious diapycnal mixing and reproducing observed properties of the Nordic Seas overflows are assessed. Numerical results prove that the localization approach proposed here can be successfully used to embed terrain-following levels in a global geopotential levels-based configuration, provided that the localized vertical coordinate chosen is flexible enough to allow a smooth transition between the two. In addition, our experiments show that deploying localized terrain-following levels via the multi-envelope method allows the crucial reduction of spurious cross-isopycnal mixing when modeling bottom intensified buoyancy driven currents, significantly improving the realism of the Nordic Seas overflows simulations in comparison to the other configurations. Important hydrographic biases are found to similarly affect all the realistic experiments and a discussion on how their interaction with the type of localized vertical coordinate affects the realism of the simulated overflows is provided

An Amundsen Sea source of decadal temperature changes on the Antarctic continental shelf

Mass loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet is dominated by basal melting–induced warm ocean water. Ice-sheet mass loss and thinning of buttressing ice shelves occur primarily in the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas. Here, we show that in a global ocean simulation using the 0.25° Nucleus for European Modeling of Ocean (NEMO) model driven by the JRA55 reanalysis from 1982 to 2017, the Amundsen sector of the Antarctic continental shelf acts as a gateway, regulating the on-shelf access of warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) from the deep ocean and its westward transfer to other sectors up to ca. 90° E, particularly the Ross Sea. As a result, anomalies in Antarctic-shelf-averaged temperature mainly originate in the Amundsen sector. These changes are primarily governed by shifts in the Amundsen Sea Low associated with tropical climate variability, modulating the on-shelf transport of CDW via wind-driven perturbations to ocean currents. The ensuing temperature anomalies progress westward from the Amundsen Sea via three distinct routes: a slow, convoluted westward pathway on the shelf via the Antarctic Coastal Current; a faster westward pathway along the shelf break via the Antarctic Slope Current and then onto the shelf along topographic troughs; and a third, eastward route toward the Bellingshausen sector, whereby temperature anomalies are transported into a region of local wind-generated changes farther north. These results emphasize the importance of the Amundsen sector for climate variability over the Antarctic shelves

Iceberg Grounding Enhances the Release of Freshwater on the Antarctic Continental Shelf

The importance of Antarctic iceberg meltwater for the Southern Ocean has been a strong incentive to include Lagrangian icebergs in ocean and climate models. However, the modeled iceberg thickness has previously been constrained to 250 m, which appears to be underestimated given the frequent observations of icebergs grounded on substantially deeper bathymetric ridges. In this study, we define the initial iceberg thickness based on the thickness of the ice shelf from which they calve and rationalize the way to define the iceberg size classes. Ocean–sea-ice–iceberg simulations reveal that more than half of the iceberg melting is discharged over the Antarctic continental shelf, reaching an average of 631 Gt yr-1 when the interaction of icebergs with bathymetry is neglected, and 802 Gt yr-1 when a simple grounding scheme is implemented. Such additional freshwater injected over the continental shelf prone to sea ice production has important consequences for the ocean properties around Antarctica. It enhances ocean stratification, inhibits deep convection and isolates dense deep waters from the colder and fresher surface layers. This isolation allows the deep waters to warm and become saltier, thereby intensifying subsequent ice-shelf melting. Moreover, the simulated distribution of grounded icebergs blocks drifting sea ice, promoting the formation of thick sea ice and polynyas when the fast ice parameterization is included. This work emphasizes the need for further research into the physical representation of iceberg grounding and iceberg–sea-ice interaction

Assessment of sub-shelf melting parameterisations using the ocean–ice-sheet coupled model NEMO(v3.6)–Elmer/Ice(v8.3)

Oceanic melting beneath ice shelves is the main driver of the current mass loss of the Antarctic ice sheet and is mostly parameterised in stand-alone ice-sheet modelling. Parameterisations are crude representations of reality, and their response to ocean warming has not been compared to 3-D ocean–ice-sheet coupled models. Here, we assess various melting parameterisations ranging from simple scalings with far-field thermal driving to emulators of box and plume models, using a new coupling framework combining the ocean model NEMO and the ice-sheet model Elmer/Ice. We define six idealised one-century scenarios for the far-field ocean ranging from cold to warm, and representative of potential futures for typical Antarctic ice shelves. The scenarios are used to constrain an idealised geometry of the Pine Island glacier representative of a relatively small cavity. Melt rates and sea-level contributions obtained with the parameterised stand-alone ice-sheet model are compared to the coupled model results. The plume parameterisations give good results for cold scenarios but fail and underestimate sea level contribution by tens of percent for warm(ing) scenarios, which may be improved by adapting its empirical scaling. The box parameterisation with five boxes compares fairly well to the coupled results for almost all scenarios, but further work is needed to grasp the correct number of boxes. For simple scalings, the comparison to the coupled framework shows that a quadratic as opposed to linear dependency on thermal forcing is required. In addition, the quadratic dependency is improved when melting depends on both local and non-local, i.e. averaged over the ice shelf, thermal forcing. The results of both the box and the two quadratic parameterisations fall within or close to the coupled model uncertainty. All parameterisations overestimate melting for thin ice shelves while underestimating melting in deep water near the grounding line. Further work is therefore needed to assess the validity of these melting parameteriations in more realistic set-ups

Experimental design for three interrelated marine ice sheet and ocean model intercomparison projects: MISMIP v. 3 (MISMIP +), ISOMIP v. 2 (ISOMIP +) and MISOMIP v. 1 (MISOMIP1)

Coupled ice sheet–ocean models capable of simulating moving grounding lines are just becoming available. Such models have a broad range of potential applications in studying the dynamics of marine ice sheets and tidewater glaciers, from process studies to future projections of ice mass loss and sea level rise. The Marine Ice Sheet–Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (MISOMIP) is a community effort aimed at designing and coordinating a series of model intercomparison projects (MIPs) for model evaluation in idealized setups, model verification based on observations, and future projections for key regions of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Here we describe computational experiments constituting three interrelated MIPs for marine ice sheet models and regional ocean circulation models incorporating ice shelf cavities. These consist of ice sheet experiments under the Marine Ice Sheet MIP third phase (MISMIP+), ocean experiments under the Ice Shelf-Ocean MIP second phase (ISOMIP+) and coupled ice sheet–ocean experiments under the MISOMIP first phase (MISOMIP1). All three MIPs use a shared domain with idealized bedrock topography and forcing, allowing the coupled simulations (MISOMIP1) to be compared directly to the individual component simulations (MISMIP+ and ISOMIP+). The experiments, which have qualitative similarities to Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf and the adjacent region of the Amundsen Sea, are designed to explore the effects of changes in ocean conditions, specifically the temperature at depth, on basal melting and ice dynamics. In future work, differences between model results will form the basis for the evaluation of the participating models