EGU21-4325
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4325
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Impact of ice sheet – ocean interactions on the Southern Ocean using fully coupled models over a circumpolar domain

Charles Pelletier1, Lars Zipf2, Konstanze Haubner2, Deborah Verfaillie1, Hugues Goosse1, Frank Pattyn2, Pierre Mathiot3, and Thierry Fichefet1
Charles Pelletier et al.
  • 1Earth and Life Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
  • 2Laboratoire de Glaciologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
  • 3IGE, Univ. Grenoble Alpes/CNRS/IRD/G-INP, Grenoble, France

From at least 1979 up until 2016, the surface of the Southern Ocean cooled down, leading to a small Antarctic sea ice extent increase, which is in stark contrast with the Arctic Ocean. The attribution of the origin of these robust observations is still very uncertain. Among other phenomena, the direct, two-way interactions between the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic ice sheet, through basal melting of its numerous and large ice-shelf cavities, have been suggested as a potentially important contributor of this cooling. In order to address this question, we perform multidecadal coupled ice sheet – ocean numerical simulations relying on f.ETISh-v1.7 and NEMO3.6-LIM3 for simulating the Antarctic ice sheet and Southern Ocean (including sea ice), respectively. This presentation is twofold. First, we present the technical aspects of the coupling infrastructure (e.g. workflow and exchanged information in between models). Second, we investigate the ice sheet – ocean feedbacks on the Southern Ocean, their interactions, and the roles of the related physical mechanisms on the ocean surface cooling.

How to cite: Pelletier, C., Zipf, L., Haubner, K., Verfaillie, D., Goosse, H., Pattyn, F., Mathiot, P., and Fichefet, T.: Impact of ice sheet – ocean interactions on the Southern Ocean using fully coupled models over a circumpolar domain, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-4325, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4325, 2021.

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