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Laurentide ice-sheet instability during the last deglaciation

Nature Geoscience volume 8, pages 534–537 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Changes in the amount of summer incoming solar radiation (insolation) reaching the Northern Hemisphere are the underlying pacemaker of glacial cycles1,2,3,4,5,6. However, not all rises in boreal summer insolation over the past 800,000 years resulted in deglaciation to present-day ice volumes1,2,3,6,7,8, suggesting that there may be a climatic threshold for the disappearance of land-based ice. Here we assess the surface mass balance stability9 of the Laurentide ice sheet—the largest glacial ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere—during the last deglaciation (24,000 to 9,000 years ago). We run a surface energy balance model10,11 with climate data from simulations with a fully coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation model for key time slices during the last deglaciation. We find that the surface mass balance of the Laurentide ice sheet was positive throughout much of the deglaciation, and suggest that dynamic discharge was mainly responsible for mass loss during this time. Total surface mass balance became negative only in the early Holocene, indicating the transition to a new state where ice loss occurred primarily by surface ablation. We conclude that the Laurentide ice sheet remained a viable ice sheet before the Holocene and began to fully deglaciate only once summer temperatures and radiative forcing over the ice sheet increased by 6–7 °C and 16–20 W m−2, respectively, relative to full glacial conditions.

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Figure 1: Deglacial forcings of surface mass balance and model results.
Figure 2: Simulated surface mass balance maps for the LIS.
Figure 3: Regional comparison of deglacial surface mass balance.

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Acknowledgements

United States National Science Foundation awards AGS-0753660 (A.E.C.), AGS-0753868 (A.N.L.), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration supported this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geoscience, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA

    David J. Ullman & Anders E. Carlson

  2. College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA

    David J. Ullman & Anders E. Carlson

  3. Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 2Y2, Canada

    Faron S. Anslow

  4. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies & Center for Climate System Research, Columbia University, New York, New York 10025, USA

    Allegra N. LeGrande

  5. Department of Earth Sciences, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire 03824, USA

    Joseph M. Licciardi

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Contributions

A.E.C., A.N.L. and F.S.A. conceived the study; D.J.U., A.N.L., A.E.C. and J.M.L. created deglacial boundary conditions for AOGCM and surface mass balance simulations; A.N.L. conducted GISS ModelE2-R simulations. D.J.U., F.S.A. and A.E.C. implemented the surface energy balance model. D.J.U., A.E.C. and A.N.L. synthesized the results. D.J.U. and A.E.C. wrote the manuscript, with input from all authors.

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Correspondence to David J. Ullman or Anders E. Carlson.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Ullman, D., Carlson, A., Anslow, F. et al. Laurentide ice-sheet instability during the last deglaciation. Nature Geosci 8, 534–537 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2463

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