What is the global glacier ice volume outside the ice sheets?
A recent study (Millan and others, 2022a, Nature Geoscience 15(2), 124-129) claims that ice volume contained in all glaciers outside the ice sheets and its potential contribution to sea level is 20% less than previously estimated. However, the apparent decrease is largely due to differences in choic...
| Published in: | Journal of Glaciology |
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2023
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1983/601b10ac-4fc8-4023-aaa5-ec550753d0e7 https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/601b10ac-4fc8-4023-aaa5-ec550753d0e7 https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2023.1 http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85148748129&partnerID=8YFLogxK |
| Summary: | A recent study (Millan and others, 2022a, Nature Geoscience 15(2), 124-129) claims that ice volume contained in all glaciers outside the ice sheets and its potential contribution to sea level is 20% less than previously estimated. However, the apparent decrease is largely due to differences in choice of domain, as the study excludes 80% of the glacier area in the Antarctic periphery that was included in previous global glacier volume estimates. The issue highlights the difficulty in separating glaciers from the ice-sheet proper, especially in Antarctica, and the need for both the glacier and ice-sheet communities to develop standards and protocols to avoid double-counting in global ice volume and mass-change assessments and projections. Process-based inversion models have replaced earlier scaling methods, but large uncertainties in global glacier volume estimation remain due to the ill-posed nature of the inversion problem and poorly constrained parameters emphasizing the need for more direct ice thickness observations. |
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