A parametric study of sea level and grounding line projections in the Amundsen Sea sector for coupled solid Earth - ice sheet models.
- 1Mechanical Engineering Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA (houriezl@stanford.edu)
- 2NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
- 3Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, San Diego, CA, USA
- 4Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
The evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) represents one of the most important and uncertain contributions to sea level rise in the upcoming centuries. Thwaites glacier and the Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) have been identified as the continent's most critical areas. The retreat of Thwaites' glacier grounding line - the transition area where ice is no longer grounded and becomes afloat - is the subject of considerable study for modelers as it governs the collapse of the glacier.
Recent advances towards coupling of dynamical ice models with Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) models has provided the means to improve grounding line projections by considering solid-Earth processes and their interactions with the cryosphere and hydrosphere. However, the spatial and temporal model resolution necessary to fully capture these interactions, and its sensitivity to model parametrization, remains elusive.
We investigate the grounding line retreat of Thwaites Glacier through 2350 using the parallelized coupled physics capabilities of the Ice-sheet and Sea-level System Model (ISSM) which capture the complex interactions between solid-Earth, ice-sheets, and ocean. We incorporate realistic climatology, ocean melt rates, and GIA models and we discuss the impact of spatial and temporal model resolution, and solid-Earth parametrization, on the grounding line retreat and sea level change.
© 2024 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged.
How to cite: Houriez, L., Larour, E., Caron, L., Schlegel, N.-J., Pelle, T., and Seroussi, H.: A parametric study of sea level and grounding line projections in the Amundsen Sea sector for coupled solid Earth - ice sheet models., EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-6043, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-6043, 2024.
Comments on the supplementary material
AC: Author Comment | CC: Community Comment | Report abuse