Nature 497, 235–238 (2013)
The contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet to sea-level rise has increased in recent years. Warming has resulted in greater ice discharge — due to accelerated ice flow and thinning of fast-flowing marine-terminating outlet glaciers — and greater surface melt. However, quantifying future sea-level rise from ice melt is a challenge, as outlet glacier dynamics are poorly understood
Faezeh Nick, of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and colleagues use a glacier flow model to simulate the behaviour of four major marine-terminating outlet glaciers, which are responsible for draining about 22% of the Greenland Ice Sheet. They use two different warming scenarios — one mid-range and one more extreme — to predict future contributions to sea-level rise.
They project 19 to 49 mm of sea-level rise by 2200, which is lower than previous upper bounds. This comes largely from dynamic loss events of these four glaciers. There are episodic increases in calving, followed by a stabilisation to losses in the region of 0.01 to 0.06 mm yr−1 for each glacier.
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Wake, B. Glacier to sea. Nature Clim Change 3, 536 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1920
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1920
