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The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets under 1.5 °C global warming

Nature Climate Change volume 8, pages 1053–1061 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Even if anthropogenic warming were constrained to less than 2 °C above pre-industrial, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will continue to lose mass this century, with rates similar to those observed over the past decade. However, nonlinear responses cannot be excluded, which may lead to larger rates of mass loss. Furthermore, large uncertainties in future projections still remain, pertaining to knowledge gaps in atmospheric (Greenland) and oceanic (Antarctica) forcing. On millennial timescales, both ice sheets have tipping points at or slightly above the 1.5–2.0 °C threshold; for Greenland, this may lead to irreversible mass loss due to the surface mass balance–elevation feedback, whereas for Antarctica, this could result in a collapse of major drainage basins due to ice-shelf weakening.

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Fig. 1: Annual mean surface mass fluxes as a function of global mean temperature anomalies.
Fig. 2: GrIS stability as a function of the imposed regional summer temperature anomaly with best-estimate model parameter values.
Fig. 3: MISI and MICI as main drivers for potential (partial) collapse of the AIS.
Fig. 4: AIS stability as a function of the imposed regional annual mean temperature anomaly.

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Data availability

Data from CESM-CAM5 is available at: https://www.earthsystemgrid.org/dataset/ucar.cgd.ccsm4.lowwarming.html

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Acknowledgements

This paper is the result of the 2017 ISMASS (Ice-Sheet Mass Balance and Sea Level) workshop held in Brussels (Belgium), co-sponsored by WCRP/CliC (http://www.climate-cryosphere.org/activities/groups/ismass), IASC and SCAR. H.G., P.K.M. and M.v.d.B. acknowledge support from the NESSC.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Glaciologie, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Frank Pattyn, Lionel Favier & Heiko Goelzer

  2. Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement, Université Grenoble-Alpes/CNRS, Grenoble, France

    Catherine Ritz, Gaël Durand & Lionel Favier

  3. School of Geography and Lincoln Centre for Water and Planetary Health, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK

    Edward Hanna

  4. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA

    Xylar Asay-Davis

  5. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

    Xylar Asay-Davis

  6. Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

    Rob DeConto

  7. Department of Geography, Université de Liège, Liège, Belgium

    Xavier Fettweis

  8. Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Heiko Goelzer, Peter Kuipers Munneke & Michiel van den Broeke

  9. Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Nicholas R. Golledge

  10. GNS Science, Avalon, Lower Hutt, New Zealand

    Nicholas R. Golledge

  11. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Jan T. M. Lenaerts

  12. NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Sophie Nowicki

  13. School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Antony J. Payne

  14. PalMA, Facultad de Ciencias Físicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Alexander Robinson

  15. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Hélène Seroussi

  16. Department of Geology, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA

    Luke D. Trusel

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  1. Frank Pattyn
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Contributions

F.P. and C.R. coordinated the study. F.P., C.R. and E.H. led the writing, and all authors contributed to the writing and discussion of ideas. J.T.M.L., P.K.M. and L.D.T. contributed the data that are presented in Fig. 1. L.F. designed Fig. 3. N.R.G. provided the data that are presented in Fig. 4.

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Correspondence to Frank Pattyn.

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Pattyn, F., Ritz, C., Hanna, E. et al. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets under 1.5 °C global warming. Nature Clim Change 8, 1053–1061 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0305-8

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