TY - THES A1 - Robinson, Alexander T1 - Modeling the Greenland Ice Sheet response to climate change in the past and future T1 - Modellierung der Reaktion des Grönländischen Inlandeises auf den vergangenen und zukünftigen Klimawandel N2 - The Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) contains enough water volume to raise global sea level by over 7 meters. It is a relic of past glacial climates that could be strongly affected by a warming world. Several studies have been performed to investigate the sensitivity of the ice sheet to changes in climate, but large uncertainties in its long-term response still exist. In this thesis, a new approach has been developed and applied to modeling the GIS response to climate change. The advantages compared to previous approaches are (i) that it can be applied over a wide range of climatic scenarios (both in the deep past and the future), (ii) that it includes the relevant feedback processes between the climate and the ice sheet and (iii) that it is highly computationally efficient, allowing simulations over very long timescales. The new regional energy-moisture balance model (REMBO) has been developed to model the climate and surface mass balance over Greenland and it represents an improvement compared to conventional approaches in modeling present-day conditions. Furthermore, the evolution of the GIS has been simulated over the last glacial cycle using an ensemble of model versions. The model performance has been validated against field observations of the present-day climate and surface mass balance, as well as paleo information from ice cores. The GIS contribution to sea level rise during the last interglacial is estimated to be between 0.5-4.1 m, consistent with previous estimates. The ensemble of model versions has been constrained to those that are consistent with the data, and a range of valid parameter values has been defined, allowing quantification of the uncertainty and sensitivity of the modeling approach. Using the constrained model ensemble, the sensitivity of the GIS to long-term climate change was investigated. It was found that the GIS exhibits hysteresis behavior (i.e., it is multi-stable under certain conditions), and that a temperature threshold exists above which the ice sheet transitions to an essentially ice-free state. The threshold in the global temperature is estimated to be in the range of 1.3-2.3°C above preindustrial conditions, significantly lower than previously believed. The timescale of total melt scales non-linearly with the overshoot above the temperature threshold, such that a 2°C anomaly causes the ice sheet to melt in ca. 50,000 years, but an anomaly of 6°C will melt the ice sheet in less than 4,000 years. The meltback of the ice sheet was found to become irreversible after a fraction of the ice sheet is already lost – but this level of irreversibility also depends on the temperature anomaly. N2 - Das grönländische Inlandeis (GIS) besteht aus einem Wasservolumen das ausreicht, um den globalen Meeresspiegel um 7 Meter ansteigen zu lassen. Es ist ein Relikt der vergangenen Eiszeit, das in einer zunehmend wärmer werdenden Welt stark in Mitleidenschaft gezogen werden könnte. In der vorliegenden Dissertation ist ein neues Verfahren zur Modellierung des Antwortverhaltens des Inlandeises auf Klimaänderungen entwickelt und angewendet worden. Die Vorteile des neuen Verfahrens im Vergleich zu den bisherigen Verfahren sind, (i) dass es über einen groen Bereich von Klimaszenarien (sowohl für die ferne Vergangenheit als auch für die Zukunft) anwendbar ist, (ii) dass es die wesentlichen Rückkopplungsprozesse zwischen Klima und Inlandeis enthält und (iii) dass es wegen seiner guten Rechenzeiteffizienz Simulationen über sehr lange Zeitskalen erlaubt. Das neue Modell (REMBO) ist für die Modellierung des Klimas und der Massenbilanz an der grönländischen Oberfläche entwickelt worden und stellt ein verbessertes Verfahren im Vergleich zu den bisherigen dar. Die Entwicklung von GIS über den letzten glazialen Zyklus ist mittels eines Ensembles von verschiedenen Modellversionen simuliert worden. Anschließend ist die Tauglichkeit der Modellversionen durch Vergleich mit Beobachtungsdaten des gegenwärtigen Klimas und der Oberflächenmassenbilanz, sowie mit paleoklimatischen Rekonstruktionen von Eisbohrkernen verifiziert worden. Der Anteil von GIS am Meeresspiegelanstieg während des letzten Interglazials ist im Bereich von 0.5 bis 4.1 m berechnet worden, was konsistent mit bisherigen Schätzungen ist. Von den Ensemblesimulationen sind diejenigen ausgewählt worden, deren Ergebnisse gut mit den Daten übereinstimmen. Durch die Auswahl von geeigneten Modellversionen sind gleichzeitig die Unsicherheiten der Parameterwerte begrenzt worden, so dass sich nun mit dem neuen Verfahren die Sensitivität von GIS auf Klimaänderungen bestimmen lässt. Mit den ausgewählten Modellversionen ist die Sensitivität von GIS auf langfristige Klimaänderungen untersucht worden. Es zeigt sich, dass das GIS ein Hystereseverhalten besitzt (d.h., eine Multistabilität für gewisse Klimazustände) und dass ein Temperaturschwellwert existiert. Bei Überschreiten des Schwellwertes bleibt das GIS nicht erhalten und wird langsam eisfrei werden. Der Temperaturschwellwert der globalen Mitteltemperatur relativ zur vorindustriellen Mitteltemperatur ist im Bereich 1.3-2.3°C ermittelt worden und liegt damit deutlich niedriger als bisher angenommen. Die Zeitdauer bis zum völligen Abschmelzen zeigt ein nichtlineares Verhalten hinsichtlich einer Erwärmung über den ermittelten Schwellwert. Eine Erwärmung von 2°C relativ zur vorindustriellen Zeit führt zu einem Abschmelzen nach 50.000 Jahren, aber eine Erwärmung um 6°C lässt das Inlandeis bereits nach 4.000 Jahren abschmelzen. Ein weiteres Ergebnis ist, dass der Abschmelzvorgang irreversibel werden kann, nachdem ein gewisser Anteil des Inlandeises abgeschmolzen ist – jedoch ist die Irreversibilität eines Abschmelzvorganges auch von der Temperaturanomalie abhängig. KW - Grönland KW - Inlandeis KW - Klimawandel KW - Stabilität KW - Hysterese KW - Greenland KW - ice sheet KW - climate change KW - stability KW - hysteresis Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-50430 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nowicki, Sophie A1 - Bindschadler, Robert A. A1 - Abe-Ouchi, Ayako A1 - Aschwanden, Andy A1 - Bueler, Ed A1 - Choi, Hyeungu A1 - Fastook, Jim A1 - Granzow, Glen A1 - Greve, Ralf A1 - Gutowski, Gail A1 - Herzfeld, Ute A1 - Jackson, Charles A1 - Johnson, Jesse A1 - Khroulev, Constantine A1 - Larour, Eric A1 - Levermann, Anders A1 - Lipscomb, William H. A1 - Martin, Maria A. A1 - Morlighem, Mathieu A1 - Parizek, Byron R. A1 - Pollard, David A1 - Price, Stephen F. A1 - Ren, Diandong A1 - Rignot, Eric A1 - Saito, Fuyuki A1 - Sato, Tatsuru A1 - Seddik, Hakime A1 - Seroussi, Helene A1 - Takahashi, Kunio A1 - Walker, Ryan A1 - Wang, Wei Li T1 - Insights into spatial sensitivities of ice mass response to environmental change from the SeaRISE ice sheet modeling project II Greenland JF - Journal of geophysical research : Earth surface N2 - The Sea-level Response to Ice Sheet Evolution (SeaRISE) effort explores the sensitivity of the current generation of ice sheet models to external forcing to gain insight into the potential future contribution to sea level from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. All participating models simulated the ice sheet response to three types of external forcings: a change in oceanic condition, a warmer atmospheric environment, and enhanced basal lubrication. Here an analysis of the spatial response of the Greenland ice sheet is presented, and the impact of model physics and spin-up on the projections is explored. Although the modeled responses are not always homogeneous, consistent spatial trends emerge from the ensemble analysis, indicating distinct vulnerabilities of the Greenland ice sheet. There are clear response patterns associated with each forcing, and a similar mass loss at the full ice sheet scale will result in different mass losses at the regional scale, as well as distinct thickness changes over the ice sheet. All forcings lead to an increased mass loss for the coming centuries, with increased basal lubrication and warmer ocean conditions affecting mainly outlet glaciers, while the impacts of atmospheric forcings affect the whole ice sheet. KW - Greenland KW - ice-sheet KW - sea-level KW - model KW - ensemble Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/jgrf.20076 SN - 2169-9003 VL - 118 IS - 2 SP - 1025 EP - 1044 PB - American Geophysical Union CY - Washington ER - TY - GEN A1 - Münch, Thomas A1 - Kipfstuhl, Sepp A1 - Freitag, Johannes A1 - Meyer, Hanno A1 - Laepple, Thomas T1 - Regional climate signal vs. local noise BT - a two-dimensional view of water isotopes in Antarctic firn at Kohnen Station, Dronning Maud Land T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - In low-accumulation regions, the reliability of delta O-18-derived temperature signals from ice cores within the Holocene is unclear, primarily due to the small climate changes relative to the intrinsic noise of the isotopic signal. In order to learn about the representativity of single ice cores and to optimise future ice-core-based climate reconstructions, we studied the stable-water isotope composition of firn at Kohnen Station, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica. Analysing delta O-18 in two 50m long snow trenches allowed us to create an unprecedented, two-dimensional image characterising the isotopic variations from the centimetre to the 100-metre scale. Our results show seasonal layering of the isotopic composition but also high horizontal isotopic variability caused by local stratigraphic noise. Based on the horizontal and vertical structure of the isotopic variations, we derive a statistical noise model which successfully explains the trench data. The model further allows one to determine an upper bound for the reliability of climate reconstructions conducted in our study region at seasonal to annual resolution, depending on the number and the spacing of the cores taken. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 500 KW - ice-core records KW - past 2 kyr KW - temperature variability KW - accumulation rates KW - East Antarctica KW - stable-isotopes KW - surface snow KW - time-series KW - diffusion KW - Greenland Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-408385 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 500 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Levermann, Anders A1 - Winkelmann, Ricarda T1 - A simple equation for the melt elevation feedback of ice sheets T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - In recent decades, the Greenland Ice Sheet has been losing mass and has thereby contributed to global sea-level rise. The rate of ice loss is highly relevant for coastal protection worldwide. The ice loss is likely to increase under future warming. Beyond a critical temperature threshold, a meltdown of the Greenland Ice Sheet is induced by the self-enforcing feedback between its lowering surface elevation and its increasing surface mass loss: the more ice that is lost, the lower the ice surface and the warmer the surface air temperature, which fosters further melting and ice loss. The computation of this rate so far relies on complex numerical models which are the appropriate tools for capturing the complexity of the problem. By contrast we aim here at gaining a conceptual understanding by deriving a purposefully simple equation for the self-enforcing feedback which is then used to estimate the melt time for different levels of warming using three observable characteristics of the ice sheet itself and its surroundings. The analysis is purely conceptual in nature. It is missing important processes like ice dynamics for it to be useful for applications to sea-level rise on centennial timescales, but if the volume loss is dominated by the feedback, the resulting logarithmic equation unifies existing numerical simulations and shows that the melt time depends strongly on the level of warming with a critical slow-down near the threshold: the median time to lose 10% of the present-day ice volume varies between about 3500 years for a temperature level of 0.5 degrees C above the threshold and 500 years for 5 degrees C. Unless future observations show a significantly higher melting sensitivity than currently observed, a complete meltdown is unlikely within the next 2000 years without significant ice-dynamical contributions. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 529 KW - sea-level rise KW - mass-balance KW - climate-change KW - Greenland KW - model KW - glacier KW - projections KW - dynamics KW - impact KW - 21st-Century Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-409834 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 529 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Horton, Benjamin P. A1 - Khan, Nicole S. A1 - Cahill, Niamh A1 - Lee, Janice S. H. A1 - Shaw, Timothy A. A1 - Garner, Andra J. A1 - Kemp, Andrew C. A1 - Engelhart, Simon E. A1 - Rahmstorf, Stefan T1 - Estimating global mean sea-level rise and its uncertainties by 2100 and 2300 from an expert survey JF - npj Climate and Atmospheric Science N2 - Sea-level rise projections and knowledge of their uncertainties are vital to make informed mitigation and adaptation decisions. To elicit projections from members of the scientific community regarding future global mean sea-level (GMSL) rise, we repeated a survey originally conducted five years ago. Under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6, 106 experts projected a likely (central 66% probability) GMSL rise of 0.30-0.65 m by 2100, and 0.54-2.15 m by 2300, relative to 1986-2005. Under RCP 8.5, the same experts projected a likely GMSL rise of 0.63-1.32 m by 2100, and 1.67-5.61 m by 2300. Expert projections for 2100 are similar to those from the original survey, although the projection for 2300 has extended tails and is higher than the original survey. Experts give a likelihood of 42% (original survey) and 45% (current survey) that under the high-emissions scenario GMSL rise will exceed the upper bound (0.98 m) of the likely range estimated by the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is considered to have an exceedance likelihood of 17%. Responses to open-ended questions suggest that the increases in upper-end estimates and uncertainties arose from recent influential studies about the impact of marine ice cliff instability on the meltwater contribution to GMSL rise from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. KW - projections KW - Greenland KW - consequences KW - climate Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-020-0121-5 SN - 2397-3722 VL - 3 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 8 PB - Springer Nature CY - London ER - TY - GEN A1 - Horton, Benjamin P. A1 - Khan, Nicole S. A1 - Cahill, Niamh A1 - Lee, Janice S. H. A1 - Shaw, Timothy A. A1 - Garner, Andra J. A1 - Kemp, Andrew C. A1 - Engelhart, Simon E. A1 - Rahmstorf, Stefan T1 - Estimating global mean sea-level rise and its uncertainties by 2100 and 2300 from an expert survey T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Sea-level rise projections and knowledge of their uncertainties are vital to make informed mitigation and adaptation decisions. To elicit projections from members of the scientific community regarding future global mean sea-level (GMSL) rise, we repeated a survey originally conducted five years ago. Under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6, 106 experts projected a likely (central 66% probability) GMSL rise of 0.30-0.65 m by 2100, and 0.54-2.15 m by 2300, relative to 1986-2005. Under RCP 8.5, the same experts projected a likely GMSL rise of 0.63-1.32 m by 2100, and 1.67-5.61 m by 2300. Expert projections for 2100 are similar to those from the original survey, although the projection for 2300 has extended tails and is higher than the original survey. Experts give a likelihood of 42% (original survey) and 45% (current survey) that under the high-emissions scenario GMSL rise will exceed the upper bound (0.98 m) of the likely range estimated by the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is considered to have an exceedance likelihood of 17%. Responses to open-ended questions suggest that the increases in upper-end estimates and uncertainties arose from recent influential studies about the impact of marine ice cliff instability on the meltwater contribution to GMSL rise from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 1437 KW - projections KW - Greenland KW - consequences KW - climate Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-516788 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 1 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Frieler, Katja A1 - Mengel, Matthias A1 - Levermann, Anders T1 - Delaying future sea-level rise by storing water in Antarctica T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Even if greenhouse gas emissions were stopped today, sea level would continue to rise for centuries, with the long-term sea-level commitment of a 2 degrees C warmer world significantly exceeding 2 m. In view of the potential implications for coastal populations and ecosystems worldwide, we investigate, from an ice-dynamic perspective, the possibility of delaying sea-level rise by pumping ocean water onto the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet. We find that due to wave propagation ice is discharged much faster back into the ocean than would be expected from a pure advection with surface velocities. The delay time depends strongly on the distance from the coastline at which the additional mass is placed and less strongly on the rate of sea-level rise that is mitigated. A millennium-scale storage of at least 80% of the additional ice requires placing it at a distance of at least 700 km from the coastline. The pumping energy required to elevate the potential energy of ocean water to mitigate the currently observed 3 mmyr(-1) will exceed 7% of the current global primary energy supply. At the same time, the approach offers a comprehensive protection for entire coastlines particularly including regions that cannot be protected by dikes. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 533 KW - carbon-dioxide emissions KW - ice-sheet KW - climate-change KW - model KW - collapse KW - commitment KW - Greenland KW - discharge KW - project KW - surface Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-410234 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 533 ER -