Contrasting Response of West and East Antarctic Ice Sheets to Glacial Isostatic Adjustment

Coulon, Violaine; Bulthuis, Kevin; Whitehouse, Pippa L.; Sun, Sainan; Haubner, Konstanze; Zipf, Lars; Pattyn, Frank

doi:10.1029/2020jf006003

Cited by 19 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 118 publications

(329 reference statements)

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“…The resulting reduction of relative sea level at the grounding line may stabilize its retreat, providing a negative feedback (Barletta et al, 2018;DeConto et al, 2021;Gomez et al, 2010Gomez et al, , 2015Larour et al, 2019;Pollard et al, 2017) showed that these effects do little to slow the pace of retreat until after the mid-twenty-third century in the Amundsen Sea region. Coulon et al (2021) also find that the West-Antarctic ice sheet destabilizes for high-forcing regardless of the mantle viscosity. At the same time, Kachuck et al (2020) and Pan et al (2022) indicate that the weak viscosity in West-Antarctica might significantly reduce the West-Antarctic contribution over the next 150 yr, because the rapid bedrock uplift compensates the grounding line retreat.…”

Section: What If the Major Ice Shelves Break Up?mentioning

confidence: 62%

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A High‐End Estimate of Sea Level Rise for Practitioners

et al. 2022

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Sea-level rise (SLR) is a long-lasting consequence of climate change because global anthropogenic warming takes centuries to millennia to equilibrate for the deep ocean and ice sheets. SLR projections based on climate models support policy analysis, risk assessment and adaptation planning today, despite their large uncertainties. The central range of the SLR distribution is estimated by process-based models. However, risk-averse practitioners often require information about plausible future conditions that lie in the tails of the SLR distribution, which are poorly defined by existing models. Here, a community effort combining scientists and practitioners builds on a framework of discussing physical evidence to quantify high-end global SLR for practitioners. The approach is complementary to the IPCC AR6 report and provides further physically plausible high-end scenarios. High-end estimates for the different SLR components are developed for two climate scenarios at two timescales. For global warming of +2 ˚C in 2100 (RCP2.6/SSP1-2.6) relative to pre-industrial values our high-end global SLR estimates are up to 0.9 m in 2100 and 2.5 m in 2300. Similarly, for a (RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5) we estimate up to 1.6 m in 2100 and up to 10.4 m in 2300. The large and growing differences between the scenarios beyond 2100 emphasize the long-term benefits of mitigation. However, even a modest 2 ˚C warming may cause multi-meter SLR on centennial time scales with profound consequences for coastal areas. Earlier high-end assessments focused on instability mechanisms in Antarctica, while here we emphasize the importance of the timing of ice shelf collapse around Antarctica. This is highly uncertain due to low understanding of the driving processes. Hence both process understanding and emission scenario control high-end SLR.

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Section: What If the Major Ice Shelves Break Up?mentioning

confidence: 62%

“…Coulon et al. ( 2021 ) also find that the West‐Antarctic ice sheet destabilizes for high‐forcing regardless of the mantle viscosity. At the same time, Kachuck et al.…”

Section: Antarcticamentioning

confidence: 95%

A High‐End Estimate of Sea Level Rise for Practitioners

et al. 2022

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“…This can lead to additional biases in ice-stream dynamics and poleward moisture transport, respectively. Additionally, glacial-isostatic adjustment 51 other than vertical bedrock response by elastic lithosphere is not fully implemented in LOVECLIP. Nevertheless, our simulations also illustrate that ice-sheet ocean/atmosphere coupling, which can account for individual mass balance differences of 0.5-0.8 cm/year SLE over the next ~100 years (Fig.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Future sea-level projections with a coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice-sheet model

et al. 2023

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Climate-forced, offline ice-sheet model simulations have been used extensively in assessing how much ice-sheets can contribute to future global sea-level rise. Typically, these model projections do not account for the two-way interactions between ice-sheets and climate. To quantify the impact of ice-ocean-atmosphere feedbacks, here we conduct greenhouse warming simulations with a coupled global climate-ice-sheet model of intermediate complexity. Following the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) 1-1.9, 2-4.5, 5-8.5 emission scenarios, the model simulations ice-sheet contributions to global sea-level rise by 2150 of 0.2 ± 0.01, 0.5 ± 0.01 and 1.4 ± 0.1 m, respectively. Antarctic ocean-ice-sheet-ice-shelf interactions enhance future subsurface basal melting, while freshwater-induced atmospheric cooling reduces surface melting and iceberg calving. The combined effect is likely to decelerate global sea-level rise contributions from Antarctica relative to the uncoupled climate-forced ice-sheet model configuration. Our results demonstrate that estimates of future sea-level rise fundamentally depend on the complex interactions between ice-sheets, icebergs, ocean and the atmosphere.

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“…The re‐advance was in part due to swift glacioisostatic rebound (cf. Coulon et al., 2021; Lowry et al., 2020), a process aided by the region's low‐viscosity mantle (Whitehouse et al., 2019) and likely to be accommodated upon pre‐existing crustal faults, as observed in the Lambert Graben (Phillips & Läufer, 2009). Our proposed graben‐bounding faults would provide a tectonic control on the glacioisostatic adjustment of the Siple Coast region.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Basement Topography and Sediment Thickness Beneath Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf

Tankersley

Horgan

Siddoway

et al. 2022

Geophysical Research Letters

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The southern sector of Antarctica's Ross Embayment beneath the Ross Ice Shelf (RIS; area ∼480,000 km 2 ) is poorly resolved because the region is not accessible to conventional seismic or geophysical surveying. Rock exposures on land suggest that Ross Ice Shelf (RIS) crust consists of early Paleozoic post-orogenic sediments, intruded in places by mid-Paleozoic and Cretaceous granitoids (Goodge, 2020;Luyendyk et al., 2003). Following the onset of extension in the mid-Cretaceous, grabens formed and filled with terrestrial and marine deposits, continuing into the Cenozoic (e.g., Coenen et al., 2019;Sorlien et al., 2007), as the Ross Embayment underwent thermal subsidence (Karner et al., 2005;Wilson & Luyendyk, 2009). The physiography of this region then responded to the onset of glaciation in the Oligocene (Paxman et al., 2019), coinciding with localized extension in the western Ross Sea until 11 Ma (Granot & Dyment, 2018). The Oligocene-early-Miocene paleo-landscape of the Ross Sea sector was revealed by marine seismic data (e.g., Brancolini et al., 1995;Pérez et al., 2021) and offshore drilling that penetrated crystalline basement (DSDP Site 270; Ford & Barrett, 1975) (Figure 1). Recognition of the role of elevated topography in Oligocene formation of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (DeConto & Pollard, 2003;Wilson et al., 2013) and the likely influence of subglacial topography upon ice sheet processes during some climate states (Austermann et al., 2015;Colleoni et al., 2018) motivated our effort to determine basement topography beneath the RIS.

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Contrasting Response of West and East Antarctic Ice Sheets to Glacial Isostatic Adjustment

Cited by 19 publications

References 118 publications

A High‐End Estimate of Sea Level Rise for Practitioners

A High‐End Estimate of Sea Level Rise for Practitioners

Future sea-level projections with a coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice-sheet model

Basement Topography and Sediment Thickness Beneath Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf

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