On the attribution of industrial-era glacier mass loss to anthropogenic climate change
Around the world, small ice caps and glaciers have been losing mass and retreating since the start of the industrial era. Estimates are that this has contributed approximately 30 % of the observed sea-level rise over the same period. It is important to understand the relative importance of natural a...
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Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1889-2021 https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/15/1889/2021/tc-15-1889-2021.pdf https://doaj.org/article/9a4103b610694d6599f2e9bd2344991f |
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fttriple:oai:gotriple.eu:oai:doaj.org/article:9a4103b610694d6599f2e9bd2344991f 2023-05-15T18:32:20+02:00 On the attribution of industrial-era glacier mass loss to anthropogenic climate change G. H. Roe J. E. Christian B. Marzeion 2021-04-01 https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1889-2021 https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/15/1889/2021/tc-15-1889-2021.pdf https://doaj.org/article/9a4103b610694d6599f2e9bd2344991f en eng Copernicus Publications doi:10.5194/tc-15-1889-2021 1994-0416 1994-0424 https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/15/1889/2021/tc-15-1889-2021.pdf https://doaj.org/article/9a4103b610694d6599f2e9bd2344991f undefined The Cryosphere, Vol 15, Pp 1889-1905 (2021) envir geo Journal Article https://vocabularies.coar-repositories.org/resource_types/c_6501/ 2021 fttriple https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1889-2021 2023-01-22T18:11:10Z Around the world, small ice caps and glaciers have been losing mass and retreating since the start of the industrial era. Estimates are that this has contributed approximately 30 % of the observed sea-level rise over the same period. It is important to understand the relative importance of natural and anthropogenic components of this mass loss. One recent study concluded that the best estimate of the magnitude of the anthropogenic mass loss over the industrial era was only 25 % of the total, implying a predominantly natural cause. Here we show that the anthropogenic fraction of the total mass loss of a given glacier depends only on the magnitudes and rates of the natural and anthropogenic components of climate change and on the glacier's response time. We consider climate change over the past millennium using synthetic scenarios, palaeoclimate reconstructions, numerical climate simulations, and instrumental observations. We use these climate histories to drive a glacier model that can represent a wide range of glacier response times, and we evaluate the magnitude of the anthropogenic mass loss relative to the observed mass loss. The slow cooling over the preceding millennium followed by the rapid anthropogenic warming of the industrial era means that, over the full range of response times for small ice caps and glaciers, the central estimate of the magnitude of the anthropogenic mass loss is essentially 100 % of the observed mass loss. The anthropogenic magnitude may exceed 100 % in the event that, without anthropogenic climate forcing, glaciers would otherwise have been gaining mass. Our results bring assessments of the attribution of glacier mass loss into alignment with assessments of others aspects of climate change, such as global-mean temperature. Furthermore, these results reinforce the scientific and public understanding of centennial-scale glacier retreat as an unambiguous consequence of human activity. Article in Journal/Newspaper The Cryosphere Unknown The Cryosphere 15 4 1889 1905 |
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envir geo G. H. Roe J. E. Christian B. Marzeion On the attribution of industrial-era glacier mass loss to anthropogenic climate change |
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envir geo |
description |
Around the world, small ice caps and glaciers have been losing mass and retreating since the start of the industrial era. Estimates are that this has contributed approximately 30 % of the observed sea-level rise over the same period. It is important to understand the relative importance of natural and anthropogenic components of this mass loss. One recent study concluded that the best estimate of the magnitude of the anthropogenic mass loss over the industrial era was only 25 % of the total, implying a predominantly natural cause. Here we show that the anthropogenic fraction of the total mass loss of a given glacier depends only on the magnitudes and rates of the natural and anthropogenic components of climate change and on the glacier's response time. We consider climate change over the past millennium using synthetic scenarios, palaeoclimate reconstructions, numerical climate simulations, and instrumental observations. We use these climate histories to drive a glacier model that can represent a wide range of glacier response times, and we evaluate the magnitude of the anthropogenic mass loss relative to the observed mass loss. The slow cooling over the preceding millennium followed by the rapid anthropogenic warming of the industrial era means that, over the full range of response times for small ice caps and glaciers, the central estimate of the magnitude of the anthropogenic mass loss is essentially 100 % of the observed mass loss. The anthropogenic magnitude may exceed 100 % in the event that, without anthropogenic climate forcing, glaciers would otherwise have been gaining mass. Our results bring assessments of the attribution of glacier mass loss into alignment with assessments of others aspects of climate change, such as global-mean temperature. Furthermore, these results reinforce the scientific and public understanding of centennial-scale glacier retreat as an unambiguous consequence of human activity. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
G. H. Roe J. E. Christian B. Marzeion |
author_facet |
G. H. Roe J. E. Christian B. Marzeion |
author_sort |
G. H. Roe |
title |
On the attribution of industrial-era glacier mass loss to anthropogenic climate change |
title_short |
On the attribution of industrial-era glacier mass loss to anthropogenic climate change |
title_full |
On the attribution of industrial-era glacier mass loss to anthropogenic climate change |
title_fullStr |
On the attribution of industrial-era glacier mass loss to anthropogenic climate change |
title_full_unstemmed |
On the attribution of industrial-era glacier mass loss to anthropogenic climate change |
title_sort |
on the attribution of industrial-era glacier mass loss to anthropogenic climate change |
publisher |
Copernicus Publications |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1889-2021 https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/15/1889/2021/tc-15-1889-2021.pdf https://doaj.org/article/9a4103b610694d6599f2e9bd2344991f |
genre |
The Cryosphere |
genre_facet |
The Cryosphere |
op_source |
The Cryosphere, Vol 15, Pp 1889-1905 (2021) |
op_relation |
doi:10.5194/tc-15-1889-2021 1994-0416 1994-0424 https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/15/1889/2021/tc-15-1889-2021.pdf https://doaj.org/article/9a4103b610694d6599f2e9bd2344991f |
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op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1889-2021 |
container_title |
The Cryosphere |
container_volume |
15 |
container_issue |
4 |
container_start_page |
1889 |
op_container_end_page |
1905 |
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