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Linear sea-level response to abrupt ocean warming of major West Antarctic ice basin

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 71–74 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Antarctica’s contribution to global sea-level rise has recently been increasing1. Whether its ice discharge will become unstable and decouple from anthropogenic forcing2,3,4 or increase linearly with the warming of the surrounding ocean is of fundamental importance5. Under unabated greenhouse-gas emissions, ocean models indicate an abrupt intrusion of warm circumpolar deep water into the cavity below West Antarctica’s Filchner–Ronne ice shelf within the next two centuries6,7. The ice basin’s retrograde bed slope would allow for an unstable ice-sheet retreat8, but the buttressing of the large ice shelf and the narrow glacier troughs tend to inhibit such instability9,10,11. It is unclear whether future ice loss will be dominated by ice instability or anthropogenic forcing. Here we show in regional and continental-scale ice-sheet simulations, which are capable of resolving unstable grounding-line retreat, that the sea-level response of the Filchner–Ronne ice basin is not dominated by ice instability and follows the strength of the forcing quasi-linearly. We find that the ice loss reduces after each pulse of projected warm water intrusion. The long-term sea-level contribution is approximately proportional to the total shelf-ice melt. Although the local instabilities might dominate the ice loss for weak oceanic warming12, we find that the upper limit of ice discharge from the region is determined by the forcing and not by the marine ice-sheet instability.

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Figure 1: The Filchner–Ronne ice shelf and its tributary glaciers.
Figure 2: Global mean and Antarctic subsurface ocean warming.
Figure 3: Response to ocean melt pulses.
Figure 4: Linear response to total melt.

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Acknowledgements

The study was partially financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU). We are grateful to R. Timmermann for providing the FESOM ocean model data. Model development for PISM at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, USA was supported by the NASA grants NNX13AM16G and NNX13AK27G.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 14473 Potsdam, Germany

    M. Mengel, J. Feldmann & A. Levermann

  2. Institute of Physics, Potsdam University, 14476 Potsdam, Germany

    M. Mengel, J. Feldmann & A. Levermann

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  1. M. Mengel
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Contributions

M.M., J.F. and A.L. designed the study and wrote the text. M.M. and J.F. conducted the model simulations. M.M. prepared the figures.

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Correspondence to A. Levermann.

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Mengel, M., Feldmann, J. & Levermann, A. Linear sea-level response to abrupt ocean warming of major West Antarctic ice basin. Nature Clim Change 6, 71–74 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2808

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