Contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet to sea-level over the next millenium using Large Ensemble Simulations, scalar time series, 2008-3007

• Main Author: Andy Aschwanden
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Arctic Data Center 2019
• Subjects: ice sheets; cryosphere models; PISM; ice sheet model; Greenland; glacier; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.18739/A25Q4RM0N

The Greenland Ice Sheet holds around 7.2 meters of sea-level equivalent. In recent decades rising atmosphere and ocean temperatures have led to an acceleration in mass loss, adding an average of about 0.5 millimeters per year to global mean sea-level between 1991 and 2015. Current ice margin recession in Greenland is led by the retreat of outlet glaciers, the large rivers of ice ending in narrow fjords that drain the ice sheet interior. Recent progress in measuring ice thickness is enabling models to reproduce the complex flow patterns found in outlet glaciers, a key step towards realistic projections. Here we pair an outlet glacier resolving ice sheet model with a comprehensive uncertainty quantification to estimate Greenland's contribution to sea-level over the next millennium under different climate forcings. We find that Greenland could contribute 5-33 centimeters to sea-level by 2100 and 11-155 centimeters by 2200, with discharge from outlet glaciers contributing 6-45% of the total mass loss. Our analysis shows that uncertainties in projecting mass loss are dominated by uncertainties in climate scenarios and surface processes, followed by ice dynamics, whereas uncertainties in ocean conditions play a minor role, particularly in the long term. We project that Greenland will very likely become ice-free within a millennium without significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This dataset compilation contains the simulations for the manuscript "Contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet to sea-level over the next millennium" prepared with the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM). This dataset provides the ensemble statistics for the scalar time series at percentiles 5, 16, 50, 84, and 95.