www.the-cryosphere.net/4/129/2010/ © Author(s) 2010. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. The Cryosphere An efficient regional energy-moisture balance model for simulation
Abstract. In order to explore the response of the Green-land ice sheet (GIS) to climate change on long (centennial to multi-millennial) time scales, a regional energy-moisture balance model has been developed. This model simulates seasonal variations of temperature and precipitation over Greenland a...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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2010
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.608.2508 http://www.the-cryosphere.net/4/129/2010/tc-4-129-2010.pdf |
| Summary: | Abstract. In order to explore the response of the Green-land ice sheet (GIS) to climate change on long (centennial to multi-millennial) time scales, a regional energy-moisture balance model has been developed. This model simulates seasonal variations of temperature and precipitation over Greenland and explicitly accounts for elevation and albedo feedbacks. From these fields, the annual mean surface tem-perature and surface mass balance can be determined and used to force an ice sheet model. The melt component of the surface mass balance is computed here using both a pos-itive degree day approach and a more physically-based al-ternative that includes insolation and albedo explicitly. As a validation of the climate model, we first simulated tem-perature and precipitation over Greenland for the prescribed, present-day topography. Our simulated climatology com-pares well to observations and does not differ significantly from that of a simple parameterization used in many previ-ous simulations. Furthermore, the calculated surface mass balance using both melt schemes falls within the range of re-cent regional climate model results. For a prescribed, ice-free state, the differences in simulated climatology between the regional energy-moisture balance model and the simple pa-rameterization become significant, with our model showing much stronger summer warming. When coupled to a three-dimensional ice sheet model and initialized with present-day conditions, the two melt schemes both allow realistic simu-lations of the present-day GIS. |
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