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Expert judgement assessment

Quantifying uncertainty on thin ice

Nature Climate Change volume 3, pages 311–312 (2013)Cite this article

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The contribution of ice sheets to sea-level rise still has large uncertainties that are yet to be quantified.

The Fourth Assessment Report1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected sea-level rise in 2100 of 18 to 59 cm. However, it could not provide an upper bound or most likely contribution from the ice sheets because current models are not up to the challenge. The debate over modelling continues2, as researchers explore other ways to assess the ice sheet contribution to sea-level rise (SLR). Expert informed modelling3,4 introduces assumptions on accumulation, ice-sheet collapse, spatial correlation, mass-balance baseline and growth models, and uses prior distributions on modelling coefficients. Monte Carlo simulations then produce probabilistic predictions in a base case — where input parameters are set to their most probable value — with canonical variations exploring sensitivity to assumptions. Writing in Nature Climate Change, Bamber and Aspinall5 apply structured expert judgment (SEJ) based on the Classical Model6 to quantify ice-sheet uncertainty. The experts' subjective probability assessments are elicited on variables of interest, and also on calibration variables from their field whose values are known post hoc. Experts are treated as statistical hypotheses and weighted according to statistical accuracy and informativeness, based on the calibration variables. SEJ has been applied extensively in volcanology7 and in the nuclear sector8, and more recently in public health9,10 and ecology11,12.

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Figure 1: West Antarctic Ice Sheet contribution to SLR by 2100.

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  1. Roger M. Cooke is at Resources for the Future, 1616 P Street NW, Washington DC 20036-1400, USA,

    R. M. Cooke

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  1. R. M. Cooke
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Correspondence to R. M. Cooke.

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Cooke, R. Quantifying uncertainty on thin ice. Nature Clim Change 3, 311–312 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1860

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