Relative importance of surface mass balance and outlet glacier forcing in ISMIP6 Greenland ice sheet sea-level projections
- 1NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, Norway, Climate, Bergen, Norway (heig@norceresearch.no)
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
The Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) is one of the largest contributors to global mean sea-level rise today and is expected to continue losing mass in the future under increasing Arctic warming. Mass loss in the future is caused by the thinning and retreat of marine-terminating outlet glaciers and to a larger extent by decreasing surface mass balance (SMB) due to increased surface meltwater runoff. In this paper we study the relative importance of changes in SMB and outlet glacier retreat by means of model simulations that have been performed as part of the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6 (ISMIP6). The effect of the two forcing mechanisms can be separated based on a comparison between full projections and single forcing experiments up to year 2100 for a number of ice sheet models, driving General Circulation Models and two forcing scenarios (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5). We can confirm earlier findings for the high forcing scenario that a compensation between the two processes renders the sea-level contribution from the full experiment lower than the sum of the single forcing experiments.
Sophie Nowicki, Anthony Payne, Eric Larour, Heiko Goelzer, Helene Seroussi, William H. Lipscomb, Jonathan Gregory, Ayako Abe-Ouchi, Andy Shepherd, Erika Simon, Cecile Agosta, Patrick Alexander, Andy Aschwanden, Alice Barthel, Reinhard Calov, Christopher Chambers, Youngmin Choi, Joshua Cuzzone, Christophe Dumas, Tamsin Edwards, Denis Felikson, Xavier Fettweis, Nicholas R. Golledge, Ralf Greve, Angelika Humbert, Philippe Huybrechts, Sebastien Le clec'h, Victoria Lee, Gunter Leguy, Chris Little, Daniel P. Lowry, Mathieu Morlighem, Isabel Nias, Aurelien Quiquet, Martin Rückamp, Nicole-Jeanne Schlegel, Donald Slater, Robin Smith, Fiamma Straneo, Lev Tarasov, Roderik van de Wal, Michiel van den Broeke
How to cite: Goelzer, H. and the The ISMIP6 team: Relative importance of surface mass balance and outlet glacier forcing in ISMIP6 Greenland ice sheet sea-level projections, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-11177, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-11177, 2021.
