Modeling the Pleistocene History of the Greenland Ice Sheet

One of the most profound and immediate consequences of anthropogenic climate change is sea level rise, which in large part is driven by the melting of polar ice sheets. The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) contains enough ice to raise global sea level by ~7 meters. Fluctuations of the GrIS in response to...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Keisling, Benjamin Andrew
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1836
https://doi.org/10.7275/f2ra-vx59
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/context/dissertations_2/article/2880/viewcontent/KEISLING_11_19_19_reformat.pdf
id ftunivmassamh:oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations_2-2880
record_format openpolar
spelling ftunivmassamh:oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations_2-2880 2024-04-28T08:21:26+00:00 Modeling the Pleistocene History of the Greenland Ice Sheet Keisling, Benjamin Andrew 2020-03-24T19:17:07Z application/pdf https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1836 https://doi.org/10.7275/f2ra-vx59 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/context/dissertations_2/article/2880/viewcontent/KEISLING_11_19_19_reformat.pdf unknown ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1836 doi:10.7275/f2ra-vx59 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/context/dissertations_2/article/2880/viewcontent/KEISLING_11_19_19_reformat.pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Doctoral Dissertations climate change paleoclimate glaciology ice sheet stability deglaciation cosmogenic nuclides text 2020 ftunivmassamh https://doi.org/10.7275/f2ra-vx59 2024-04-03T14:54:47Z One of the most profound and immediate consequences of anthropogenic climate change is sea level rise, which in large part is driven by the melting of polar ice sheets. The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) contains enough ice to raise global sea level by ~7 meters. Fluctuations of the GrIS in response to past climate change provide an opportunity to better understanding the stability of the ice sheet during periods of climatic change. In this thesis, we use numerical ice-sheet models to understand the causes and consequences of past fluctuations of the Greenland ice sheet. In Chapters 3 and 4, we examined the last deglaciation (21,000 years ago until present day). The last deglaciation is the most recent time when the ice sheet retreated significantly, shrinking from its advanced state during the Last Glacial Maximum to a minimum configuration slightly smaller than the present-day ice sheet. We evaluate simulations of the deglaciation against a database of observations in order to understand the causes and drivers of ice-sheet retreat around the margin of the ice sheet for different climate scenarios. In Chapter 3, we show how abrupt climate change and changes in seasonality affected different regions of the ice sheet by modulating the timing of deglaciation around the margin. In Chapter 4, we analyze the mass balance processes that drove retreat in each region in order to identify the most salient drivers of retreat for each major drainage of the GrIS. Chapters 3 and 4 are in preparation for publication. In Chapter 5, we studied the initiation of the ice sheet during the warm Pliocene. We show that early fluctuations of the ice sheet can lead to the development of a large proglacial lake, which has major implications for landscape evolution, abrupt climate change, and ice-sheet stability during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. These proglacial lakes have the potential to affect erosional processes, and we argue that they may be responsible for carving Petermann canyon, a geomorphological feature which has important ... Text Greenland Ice Sheet University of Massachusetts: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst
institution Open Polar
collection University of Massachusetts: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst
op_collection_id ftunivmassamh
language unknown
topic climate change
paleoclimate
glaciology
ice sheet stability
deglaciation
cosmogenic nuclides
spellingShingle climate change
paleoclimate
glaciology
ice sheet stability
deglaciation
cosmogenic nuclides
Keisling, Benjamin Andrew
Modeling the Pleistocene History of the Greenland Ice Sheet
topic_facet climate change
paleoclimate
glaciology
ice sheet stability
deglaciation
cosmogenic nuclides
description One of the most profound and immediate consequences of anthropogenic climate change is sea level rise, which in large part is driven by the melting of polar ice sheets. The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) contains enough ice to raise global sea level by ~7 meters. Fluctuations of the GrIS in response to past climate change provide an opportunity to better understanding the stability of the ice sheet during periods of climatic change. In this thesis, we use numerical ice-sheet models to understand the causes and consequences of past fluctuations of the Greenland ice sheet. In Chapters 3 and 4, we examined the last deglaciation (21,000 years ago until present day). The last deglaciation is the most recent time when the ice sheet retreated significantly, shrinking from its advanced state during the Last Glacial Maximum to a minimum configuration slightly smaller than the present-day ice sheet. We evaluate simulations of the deglaciation against a database of observations in order to understand the causes and drivers of ice-sheet retreat around the margin of the ice sheet for different climate scenarios. In Chapter 3, we show how abrupt climate change and changes in seasonality affected different regions of the ice sheet by modulating the timing of deglaciation around the margin. In Chapter 4, we analyze the mass balance processes that drove retreat in each region in order to identify the most salient drivers of retreat for each major drainage of the GrIS. Chapters 3 and 4 are in preparation for publication. In Chapter 5, we studied the initiation of the ice sheet during the warm Pliocene. We show that early fluctuations of the ice sheet can lead to the development of a large proglacial lake, which has major implications for landscape evolution, abrupt climate change, and ice-sheet stability during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. These proglacial lakes have the potential to affect erosional processes, and we argue that they may be responsible for carving Petermann canyon, a geomorphological feature which has important ...
format Text
author Keisling, Benjamin Andrew
author_facet Keisling, Benjamin Andrew
author_sort Keisling, Benjamin Andrew
title Modeling the Pleistocene History of the Greenland Ice Sheet
title_short Modeling the Pleistocene History of the Greenland Ice Sheet
title_full Modeling the Pleistocene History of the Greenland Ice Sheet
title_fullStr Modeling the Pleistocene History of the Greenland Ice Sheet
title_full_unstemmed Modeling the Pleistocene History of the Greenland Ice Sheet
title_sort modeling the pleistocene history of the greenland ice sheet
publisher ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst
publishDate 2020
url https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1836
https://doi.org/10.7275/f2ra-vx59
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/context/dissertations_2/article/2880/viewcontent/KEISLING_11_19_19_reformat.pdf
genre Greenland
Ice Sheet
genre_facet Greenland
Ice Sheet
op_source Doctoral Dissertations
op_relation https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1836
doi:10.7275/f2ra-vx59
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/context/dissertations_2/article/2880/viewcontent/KEISLING_11_19_19_reformat.pdf
op_rights http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
op_doi https://doi.org/10.7275/f2ra-vx59
_version_ 1797583777885585408