The Response of Ice Sheets to Climate Variability

Kate Snow, Dan Goldberg, Paul Holland, James Jordan, Robert Arthern, Adrian Jenkins

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Citations (Scopus)
30 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

West Antarctic Ice Sheet loss is a significant contributor to sea level rise. While the ice loss is thought to be triggered by fluctuations in oceanic heat at the ice shelf bases, ice sheet response to ocean variability remains poorly understood. Using a synchronously coupled ice-ocean model permitting grounding line migration, this study evaluates the response of an ice sheet to periodic variations in ocean forcing. Resulting oscillations in grounded ice volume amplitude is shown to grow as a nonlinear function of ocean forcing period. This implies that slower oscillations in climatic forcing are disproportionately important to ice sheets. The ice shelf residence time offers a critical time scale, above which the ice response amplitude is a linear function of ocean forcing period and below which it is quadratic. These results highlight the sensitivity of West Antarctic ice streams to perturbations in heat fluxes occurring at decadal time scales.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)11,878-11,885
JournalGeophysical Research Letters
Volume44
Issue number23
Early online date11 Dec 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 16 Dec 2017

Keywords

  • synchronous coupling
  • ice-ocean model
  • climate variability
  • ice sheet response

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'The Response of Ice Sheets to Climate Variability'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this