气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): Large and irreversible future decline of the Greenland ice sheet

CCPortal

DOI	10.5194/tc-14-4299-2020
	Large and irreversible future decline of the Greenland ice sheet
	Gregory J.M.; George S.E.; Smith R.S.
发表日期	2020
ISSN	19940416
起始页码	4299
结束页码	4322
卷号	14 期号:12
英文摘要	We have studied the evolution of the Greenland ice sheet under a range of constant climates typical of those projected for the end of the present century using a dynamical ice sheet model (Glimmer) coupled to an atmosphere general circulation model (FAMOUS-ice AGCM). The ice sheet surface mass balance (SMB) is simulated within the AGCM by a multilayer snow scheme from snowfall and surface energy fluxes, including refreezing and dependence on altitude within AGCM grid boxes. Over millennia under any warmer climate, the ice sheet reaches a new steady state, whose mass is correlated with the magnitude of global climate change imposed. If a climate that gives the recently observed SMB were maintained, global-mean sea level rise (GMSLR) would reach 0.5-2.5m. For any global warming exceeding 3K, the contribution to GMSLR exceeds 5m. For the largest global warming considered (+5K), the rate of GMSLR is initially 2.7mmyr-1, and eventually only a small ice cap endures, resulting in over 7m of GMSLR. Our analysis gives a qualitatively different impression from previous work in that we do not find a sharp threshold warming that divides scenarios in which the ice sheet suffers little reduction from those in which it is mostly lost. The final steady state is achieved by withdrawal from the coast in some places and a tendency for increasing SMB due to enhancement of cloudiness and snowfall over the remaining ice sheet by the effects of topographic change on atmospheric circulation, outweighing the tendency for decreasing SMB from the reduction in surface altitude. If late 20th-century climate is restored after the ice sheet mass has fallen below a threshold of about 4m of sea level equivalent, it will not regrow to its present extent because the snowfall in the northern part of the island is reduced once the ice sheet retreats from there. In that case, about 2m of GMSLR would become irreversible. In order to avoid this outcome, anthropogenic climate change must be reversed before the ice sheet has declined to the threshold mass, which would be reached in about 600 years at the highest rate of mass loss within the likely range of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. © Author(s) 2020.
英文关键词	future prospect; general circulation model; glacier mass balance; human activity; ice sheet; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; meltwater; sea level change; Arctic; Greenland; Greenland Ice Sheet
语种	英语
来源期刊	Cryosphere
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/202092
作者单位	National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom; Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, United Kingdom
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Gregory J.M.,George S.E.,Smith R.S.. Large and irreversible future decline of the Greenland ice sheet[J],2020,14(12).
APA	Gregory J.M.,George S.E.,&Smith R.S..(2020).Large and irreversible future decline of the Greenland ice sheet.Cryosphere,14(12).
MLA	Gregory J.M.,et al."Large and irreversible future decline of the Greenland ice sheet".Cryosphere 14.12(2020).