Dynamic regimes of the Greenland Ice Sheet emerging from interacting melt–elevation and glacial isostatic adjustment feedbacks ...

• Main Authors: Zeitz, Maria, Haacker, Jan M., Donges, Jonathan F., Albrecht, Torsten, Winkelmann, Ricarda
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Göttingen : Copernicus Publ. 2022
• Subjects: Arctic; Greenland; Greenland Ice Sheet; Earth atmosphere; Glacial geology; 550; Global warming; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.34657/10899; https://oa.tib.eu/renate/handle/123456789/11866

The stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet under global warming is governed by a number of dynamic processes and interacting feedback mechanisms in the ice sheet, atmosphere and solid Earth. Here we study the long-term effects due to the interplay of the competing melt-elevation and glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) feedbacks for different temperature step forcing experiments with a coupled ice-sheet and solid-Earth model. Our model results show that for warming levels above 2 C, Greenland could become essentially ice-free within several millennia, mainly as a result of surface melting and acceleration of ice flow. These ice losses are mitigated, however, in some cases with strong GIA feedback even promoting an incomplete recovery of the Greenland ice volume. We further explore the full-factorial parameter space determining the relative strengths of the two feedbacks: our findings suggest distinct dynamic regimes of the Greenland Ice Sheets on the route to destabilization under global warming - from ...