The Transient Sea Level Response to External Forcing in CMIP6 Models

Earth is warming and sea levels are rising as land‐based ice is lost to melt, and oceans expand due to accumulation of heat. The pace of ice loss and steric expansion is linked to the intensity of warming. How much faster sea level will rise as climate warms is, however, highly uncertain and difficu...

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Published in:Earth's Future
Main Authors: Grinsted, Aslak, Bamber, Jonathan, Bingham, Rory, Buzzard, Sammie, Nias, Isabel, Ng, Kelvin, Weeks, Jennifer
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2022
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Online Access:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9786795/
https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002696
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spelling ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:9786795 2023-05-15T13:58:38+02:00 The Transient Sea Level Response to External Forcing in CMIP6 Models Grinsted, Aslak Bamber, Jonathan Bingham, Rory Buzzard, Sammie Nias, Isabel Ng, Kelvin Weeks, Jennifer 2022-10-24 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9786795/ https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002696 en eng John Wiley and Sons Inc. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9786795/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002696 © 2022 The Authors. Earth's Future published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Geophysical Union. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. CC-BY Earths Future Research Article Text 2022 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002696 2023-01-01T01:33:38Z Earth is warming and sea levels are rising as land‐based ice is lost to melt, and oceans expand due to accumulation of heat. The pace of ice loss and steric expansion is linked to the intensity of warming. How much faster sea level will rise as climate warms is, however, highly uncertain and difficult to model. Here, we quantify the transient sea level sensitivity of the sea level budget in both models and observations. Models show little change in sensitivity to warming between the first and second half of the twenty‐first century for most contributors. The exception is glaciers and ice caps (GIC) that have a greater sensitivity pre‐2050 (2.8 ± 0.4 mm/yr/K) compared to later (0.7 ± 0.1 mm/yr/K). We attribute this change to the short response time of glaciers and their changing area over time. Model sensitivities of steric expansion (1.5 ± 0.2 mm/yr/K), and Greenland Ice Sheet mass loss (0.8 ± 0.2 mm/yr/K) are greater than, but still compatible with, corresponding estimates from historical data (1.4 ± 0.5 and 0.4 ± 0.2 mm/yr/K). Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) models tends to show lower rates of sea level rise (SLR) with warming (−0.0 ± 0.3 mm/yr/K) in contrast to historical estimates (0.4 ± 0.2 mm/yr/K). This apparent low bias in AIS sensitivity is only partly able to account for a similar low bias identified in the sensitivity of global mean sea level excluding GIC (3.1 ± 0.4 vs. 2.3 ± 0.4 mm/yr/K). The balance temperature, where SLR is zero, lies close to the pre‐industrial value, implying that SLR can only be mitigated by substantial global cooling. Text Antarc* Antarctic Greenland Ice Sheet PubMed Central (PMC) Antarctic Greenland Earth's Future 10 10
institution Open Polar
collection PubMed Central (PMC)
op_collection_id ftpubmed
language English
topic Research Article
spellingShingle Research Article
Grinsted, Aslak
Bamber, Jonathan
Bingham, Rory
Buzzard, Sammie
Nias, Isabel
Ng, Kelvin
Weeks, Jennifer
The Transient Sea Level Response to External Forcing in CMIP6 Models
topic_facet Research Article
description Earth is warming and sea levels are rising as land‐based ice is lost to melt, and oceans expand due to accumulation of heat. The pace of ice loss and steric expansion is linked to the intensity of warming. How much faster sea level will rise as climate warms is, however, highly uncertain and difficult to model. Here, we quantify the transient sea level sensitivity of the sea level budget in both models and observations. Models show little change in sensitivity to warming between the first and second half of the twenty‐first century for most contributors. The exception is glaciers and ice caps (GIC) that have a greater sensitivity pre‐2050 (2.8 ± 0.4 mm/yr/K) compared to later (0.7 ± 0.1 mm/yr/K). We attribute this change to the short response time of glaciers and their changing area over time. Model sensitivities of steric expansion (1.5 ± 0.2 mm/yr/K), and Greenland Ice Sheet mass loss (0.8 ± 0.2 mm/yr/K) are greater than, but still compatible with, corresponding estimates from historical data (1.4 ± 0.5 and 0.4 ± 0.2 mm/yr/K). Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) models tends to show lower rates of sea level rise (SLR) with warming (−0.0 ± 0.3 mm/yr/K) in contrast to historical estimates (0.4 ± 0.2 mm/yr/K). This apparent low bias in AIS sensitivity is only partly able to account for a similar low bias identified in the sensitivity of global mean sea level excluding GIC (3.1 ± 0.4 vs. 2.3 ± 0.4 mm/yr/K). The balance temperature, where SLR is zero, lies close to the pre‐industrial value, implying that SLR can only be mitigated by substantial global cooling.
format Text
author Grinsted, Aslak
Bamber, Jonathan
Bingham, Rory
Buzzard, Sammie
Nias, Isabel
Ng, Kelvin
Weeks, Jennifer
author_facet Grinsted, Aslak
Bamber, Jonathan
Bingham, Rory
Buzzard, Sammie
Nias, Isabel
Ng, Kelvin
Weeks, Jennifer
author_sort Grinsted, Aslak
title The Transient Sea Level Response to External Forcing in CMIP6 Models
title_short The Transient Sea Level Response to External Forcing in CMIP6 Models
title_full The Transient Sea Level Response to External Forcing in CMIP6 Models
title_fullStr The Transient Sea Level Response to External Forcing in CMIP6 Models
title_full_unstemmed The Transient Sea Level Response to External Forcing in CMIP6 Models
title_sort transient sea level response to external forcing in cmip6 models
publisher John Wiley and Sons Inc.
publishDate 2022
url http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9786795/
https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002696
geographic Antarctic
Greenland
geographic_facet Antarctic
Greenland
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Antarctic
Greenland
Ice Sheet
genre_facet Antarc*
Antarctic
Greenland
Ice Sheet
op_source Earths Future
op_relation http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9786795/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002696
op_rights © 2022 The Authors. Earth's Future published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Geophysical Union.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
op_rightsnorm CC-BY
op_doi https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002696
container_title Earth's Future
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