Mass loss of the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica from four independent techniques

Sutterley, T. C.; Velicogna, I.; Rignot, Eric; Mouginot, J.; Flament, Thomas; Broeke, M. R. van den; Wessem, Jan Melchior van; Reijmer, C. H.

doi:10.1002/2014gl061940

Cited by 98 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 57 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Sutterley et al [77] compared four independent estimates of the mass balance of the Amundsen Sea area, identified by all studies as the primary region of Antarctica currently experiencing mass loss. The four methods agree in terms of mass loss and acceleration in loss at the regional scale.…”

Section: Antarctic Ice Sheetmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent Progress in Understanding and Projecting Regional and Global Mean Sea Level Change

Clark

Church

Gregory

et al. 2015

Curr Clim Change Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Considerable progress has been made in understanding the present and future regional and global sea level in the 2 years since the publication of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Here, we evaluate how the new results affect the AR5's assessment of (i) historical sea level rise, including attribution of that rise and implications for the sea level budget, (ii) projections of the components and of total global mean sea level (GMSL), and (iii) projections of regional variability and emergence of the anthropogenic signal. In each of these cases, new work largely provides additional evidence in support of the AR5 assessment, providing greater confidence in those findings. Recent analyses confirm the twentieth century sea level rise, with some analyses showing a slightly smaller rate before 1990 and some a slightly larger value than reported in the AR5. There is now more evidence of an acceleration in the rate of rise. Ongoing ocean heat uptake and associated thermal expansion have continued since 2000, and are consistent with ocean thermal expansion reported in the AR5. A significant amount of heat is being stored deeper in the water column, with a larger rate of heat uptake since 2000 compared to the previous decades and with the largest storage in the Southern Ocean. The first formal detection studies for ocean thermal expansion and glacier mass loss since the AR5 have confirmed the AR5 finding of a significant anthropogenic contribution to sea level rise over the last 50 years. New projections of glacier loss from two regions suggest smaller contributions to GMSL rise from these regions than in studies assessed by the AR5; additional regional studies are required to further assess whether there are broader implications of these results. Mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet, primarily as a result of increased surface melting, and from the Antarctic Ice Sheet, primarily as a result of increased ice discharge, has accelerated. The largest estimates of acceleration in mass loss from the two ice sheets for 2003-2013 equal or exceed the acceleration of GMSL rise calculated from the satellite altimeter sea level record over the longer period of 1993-2014. However, when increased mass gain in land water storage and parts of East Antarctica, and decreased mass loss from glaciers in Alaska and some other regions are taken into account, the net acceleration in the ocean mass gain is consistent with the satellite altimeter record. New studies suggest that a marine ice sheet instability (MISI) may have been initiated in parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), but that it will affect only a limited number of ice streams in the twenty-first century. New projections of mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets by 2100, including a contribution from parts of WAIS undergoing unstable retreat, suggest a contribution that falls largely within the likely range (i.e., two thirds probability) of the AR5. These new results increase confidence in the AR5 likel...

show abstract

Section: Antarctic Ice Sheetmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent Progress in Understanding and Projecting Regional and Global Mean Sea Level Change

Clark

Church

Gregory

et al. 2015

Curr Clim Change Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Measurements of ice sheet topography are needed as a boundary condition for numerical projections of ice dynamics and potential sea level contributions (Cornford et al, 2015;Ritz et al, 2015). Accurate knowledge of surface elevation is also essential for both the delineation of drainage basins and estimation of grounding line ice thickness, necessary for estimates of Antarctic mass balance calculated via the mass budget method (Rignot et al, 2011b;25 Shepherd et al, 2012;Sutterly et al, 2014). Furthermore, detailed and up-to-date DEMs are required to distinguish between phase differences caused by topography and ice motion when estimating ice velocity using interferometric synthetic aperture radar (Rignot et al, 2011a;Mouginot et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introduction 20mentioning

confidence: 99%

A new Digital Elevation Model of Antarctica derived from CryoSat-2 altimetry

Slater¹,

Shepherd²,

McMillan³

et al. 2017

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. 10We present a new Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the Antarctic ice sheet and ice shelves based on 2.5 x 10 8 observations recorded by the CryoSat-2 satellite radar altimeter between July 2010 and July 2016. The DEM is formed from spatio-temporal fits to elevation measurements accumulated within 1, 2 and 5 km grid cells, and is posted at the modal resolution of 1 km.Altogether, 94 % of the grounded ice sheet and 98 % of the floating ice shelves are observed, and the remaining grid cellsNorth of 88 o S are interpolated using ordinary kriging. The median and root mean square difference between the DEM and 15 2.3 x 10 7 airborne laser altimeter measurements acquired during NASA Operation IceBridge campaigns are -0.30 m and 13.50 m, respectively. The DEM uncertainty rises in regions of high slope -especially where elevation measurements were acquired in Low Resolution Mode -and, taking this into account, we estimate the average accuracy to be 9.5 m -a value that is comparable to or better than that of other models derived from satellite radar and laser altimetry.

show abstract

“…For example, warming trends observed in the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) and West Antarctica (WA) in the past decades (Vaughan et al 2003;Bromwich et al 2012) have been associated with increase in mass loss Sutterley et al 2014). Present available observation dataset, however, is of insufficient length to address that these warming trends are anthropogenically forced, because natural interannual to multi-decadal variability may obscure these warming trends (Jones et al 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification of Air Masses Responsible for Warm Events on the East Antarctic Coast

Kurita

Hirasawa

Koga

et al. 2016

SOLA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Warm events, periods when rising surface air temperatures can trigger surface melt, have been recorded during the austral summer at Syowa station on the East Antarctic coast. This study identifies air masses responsible for summer warm events at Syowa. Air masses arriving at Syowa are classified into marine and glacial sources based on their isotopic characteristics. Warm events are not associated with moist marine air intrusion, but with the downward flow of dry glacial air along the west side slope of the mountains in Enderby Land (EL). We use simulations from the Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System (AMPS) to explore the atmospheric process responsible for the warmest event at Syowa. The model output illustrates several foehn-associated features such as low-level blocking, precipitation on the mountain's windward side, and mountain wave activity, with warm air ascending on the upstream slope and descending to Syowa. The foehn warming is caused by an easterly cross-mountain flow associated with a low-pressure system to the north of the EL coast. Future changes in synoptic cyclonic activity off the EL coast may have a significant impact on the frequency and intensity of foehn events at Syowa and the associated coastal warm events.(Citation: Kurita, N., N. Hirasawa, S. Koga, J. Matsushita, H. C. Steen-Larsen, V. Masson-Delmotte, and Y. Fujiyoshi, 2016: Identification of air mass responsible for warm events on the East

show abstract

Mass loss of the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica from four independent techniques

Cited by 98 publications

References 57 publications

Recent Progress in Understanding and Projecting Regional and Global Mean Sea Level Change

Recent Progress in Understanding and Projecting Regional and Global Mean Sea Level Change

A new Digital Elevation Model of Antarctica derived from CryoSat-2 altimetry

Identification of Air Masses Responsible for Warm Events on the East Antarctic Coast

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About