Greenland climate change:From the past to the future

• Published in: Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change
• Main Authors: Masson-Delmotte, Valerie, Swingedouw, D., Landais, A., Seidenkrantz, Marit-Solveig, Gauthier, E., Bichet, V., Massa, C., Perren, B., Jomelli, V., Adalgeirsdottir, G., Hesselbjerg Christensen, J., Pedersen, Jette Arneborg, Bhatt, U., Walker, D.A., Elberling, Bo, Gillet-Chaulet, F, Ritz, C., Gallée, H., van den Broeke, M., Fettweis, X., de Vernal, A., Vinther, Bo Møllesøe
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: Greenland; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/publications/greenland-climate-change(cdcc52ec-ad8f-4e08-844b-f5f26ef79a9e).html; https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.186

Climate archives available from deep-sea and marine shelf sediments, glaciers, lakes and ice cores in and around Greenland allow us to place the current trends in regional climate, ice sheet dynamics, and land surface changes in a broader perspective. We show that during the last decade (2000s), atmospheric and sea-surface temperatures are reaching levels last encountered millennia ago when northern high latitude summer insolation was higher due to a different orbital configuration. Concurrently, records from lake sediments in southern Greenland document major environmental and climatic conditions during the last 10 000 years, highlighting the role of soil dynamics in past vegetation changes, and stressing the growing anthropogenic impacts on soil erosion during recent decades. Furthermore, past and present changes in atmospheric and oceanic heat advection appear to severely influence both regional climate and ice sheet dynamics. The magnitude and rate of future changes in Greenland temperature, in response to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, may be faster than any past abrupt events occurring under interglacial conditions. Projections indicate that within one century Greenland may in fact reach temperatures last encountered during the last interglacial period, 125 000 years ago. However, analogies between the last interglacial and future changes remain disputed because of the different seasonal impacts of orbital and greenhouse gas forcings. Over several decades to centuries, future Greenland melt thus may act as a negative feedback, limiting regional warming albeit with global sea level and climatic impacts.