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Simulations of the Greenland ice sheet 100 years into the future with the full Stokes model Elmer/Ice

H. SEDDIK, R. GREVE, T. ZWINGER, F. GILLET-CHAULET and O. GAGLIARDINI


Abstract

It is likely that climate change will have a significant impact on the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet, contributing to future sea-level rise. Here we present the implementation of the full Stokes model Elmer/Ice for the Greenland ice sheet, which includes a mesh refinement technique in order to resolve fast-flowing ice streams and outlet glaciers. We discuss simulations 100 years into the future, forced by scenarios defined by the SeaRISE (Sea-level Response to Ice Sheet Evolution) community effort. For comparison, the same experiments are also run with the shallow-ice model SICOPOLIS (SImulation COde for POLythermal Ice Sheets). We find that Elmer/Ice is ~43% more sensitive (exhibits a larger loss of ice-sheet volume relative to the control run) than SICOPOLIS for the ice-dynamic scenario (doubled basal sliding), but ~61% less sensitive for the direct global warming scenario (based on the A1B moderate-emission scenario for greenhouse gases). The scenario with combined A1B global warming and doubled basal sliding forcing produces a Greenland contribution to sea-level rise of ~15 cm for Elmer/Ice and ~12 cm for SICOPOLIS over the next 100 years.


Journal of Glaciology 58 (209), 427-440 (2012).

 
Last modified: 2012-03-21