Articles | Volume 16, issue 19
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-5627-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-5627-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Development and technical paper
| 
10 Oct 2023
Development and technical paper |
| 10 Oct 2023
| 10 Oct 2023
Modeling sensitivities of thermally and hydraulically driven ice stream surge cycling
Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, A1B 3X7, Canada
Lev Tarasov
Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, A1B 3X7, Canada
Elisa Mantelli
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Ludwig-Maximillians-Universitaet Munich, Theresienstr. 41, 80333 Munich, Germany
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Am Alten Hafen 26, 27568 Bremerhaven, Germany
Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, 20 Castray Esplanade, Battery Point TAS 7004, Australia
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The ice-rafted debris signature of Heinrich events in marine sedimentary cores is usually attributed to massive ice discharge from the Laurentide Ice Sheet. However, the driving mechanism of this pulsed discharge remains unclear. We compare three previously proposed hypotheses and examine the role of relevant system processes. We find ice stream surge cycling is the most likely mechanism, but its character is sensitive to both the geothermal heat flux and the form of the basal drag law.
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We used a fully coupled ice-climate model to simulate the last two glacial inceptions, and compare the ensemble simulated ice sheet evolution to limited geological data. Our results show that Northern Hemisphere ice sheets grew rapidly, sometimes merging in ways not previously assumed and that capturing one glacial inception does not guarantee capturing another. These findings improve our understanding of ice-age dynamics and highlight challenges in predicting past and future climate evolution.
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Ryan Love, Glenn A. Milne, Parviz Ajourlou, Soran Parang, Lev Tarasov, and Konstantin Latychev
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Daniel H. Richards, Elisa Mantelli, Samuel S. Pegler, and Sandra Piazolo
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Ice behaves differently depending on its crystal orientation, but how this affects its flow is unclear. We combine a range of previous models into a common equation to better understand crystal alignment. We tested a range of previous models on ice streams and divides, discovering that the best fit to observations comes from a) assuming neighbouring crystals have the same stress, and b) through describing the effect of crystal orientation on the flow in a way that allows directional variation.
Robert G. Bingham, Julien A. Bodart, Marie G. P. Cavitte, Ailsa Chung, Rebecca J. Sanderson, Johannes C. R. Sutter, Olaf Eisen, Nanna B. Karlsson, Joseph A. MacGregor, Neil Ross, Duncan A. Young, David W. Ashmore, Andreas Born, Winnie Chu, Xiangbin Cui, Reinhard Drews, Steven Franke, Vikram Goel, John W. Goodge, A. Clara J. Henry, Antoine Hermant, Benjamin H. Hills, Nicholas Holschuh, Michelle R. Koutnik, Gwendolyn J.-M. C. Leysinger Vieli, Emma J. Mackie, Elisa Mantelli, Carlos Martín, Felix S. L. Ng, Falk M. Oraschewski, Felipe Napoleoni, Frédéric Parrenin, Sergey V. Popov, Therese Rieckh, Rebecca Schlegel, Dustin M. Schroeder, Martin J. Siegert, Xueyuan Tang, Thomas O. Teisberg, Kate Winter, Shuai Yan, Harry Davis, Christine F. Dow, Tyler J. Fudge, Tom A. Jordan, Bernd Kulessa, Kenichi Matsuoka, Clara J. Nyqvist, Maryam Rahnemoonfar, Matthew R. Siegfried, Shivangini Singh, Verjan Višnjević, Rodrigo Zamora, and Alexandra Zuhr
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Brian R. Crow, Lev Tarasov, Michael Schulz, and Matthias Prange
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The interaction of fast-flowing regions of continental ice sheets with their beds governs how quickly they slide and therefore flow. The coupling of fast ice to its bed is controlled by the pressure of meltwater at its base. It is currently poorly understood how the physical details of these hydrologic systems affect ice speedup. Using numerical models we find, surprisingly, that they largely do not, except for the duration of the surge. This suggests that cheap models are sufficient.
Ryan Love, Lev Tarasov, Heather Andres, Alan Condron, Xu Zhang, and Gerrit Lohmann
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Freshwater injection into bands across the North Atlantic are a mainstay of climate modelling when investigating topics such as climate change or the role of glacial runoff in the glacial climate system. However, this approach is unrealistic and results in a systematic bias in the climate response to a given flux of freshwater. We evaluate the magnitude of this bias by comparison to two other approaches for introducing freshwater into a coupled climate model setup for glacial conditions.
Benoit S. Lecavalier, Lev Tarasov, Greg Balco, Perry Spector, Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand, Christo Buizert, Catherine Ritz, Marion Leduc-Leballeur, Robert Mulvaney, Pippa L. Whitehouse, Michael J. Bentley, and Jonathan Bamber
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The Antarctic Ice Sheet Evolution constraint database version 2 (AntICE2) consists of a large variety of observations that constrain the evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet over the last glacial cycle. This includes observations of past ice sheet extent, past ice thickness, past relative sea level, borehole temperature profiles, and present-day bedrock displacement rates. The database is intended to improve our understanding of past Antarctic changes and for ice sheet model calibrations.
Lev Tarasov and Michael Goldstein
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-1410, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-1410, 2023
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This overview: 1. Illustrates how current climate and/or ice sheet model-based inferences about the past tend to have little interpretable value about the real world given inadequate accounting of uncertainties. 2. Explains Bayesian inference to a non-statistical community. 3. Sketches out some tractable inferential steps for computationally expensive models in a way that meaningfully accounts for uncertainties. 4. Lays out some steps for the community to move forward.
Lev Tarasov and Michael Goldstein
Clim. Past Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2021-145, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2021-145, 2021
Revised manuscript not accepted
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This review: 1. Illustrates how current climate and/or ice sheet model-based inferences about the past tend to have limited interpretable value about the real world given inadequate accounting of uncertainties. 2. Explains Bayesian inference to a non-statistical community. 3. Sketches out tractable Bayesian inference for computationally expensive models in a way that meaningfully accounts for uncertainties. 4. Lays out some steps for the community to move forward.
Ryan Love, Heather J. Andres, Alan Condron, and Lev Tarasov
Clim. Past, 17, 2327–2341, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-2327-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-2327-2021, 2021
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Freshwater, in the form of glacial runoff, is hypothesized to play a critical role in centennial- to millennial-scale climate variability and climate transitions. We track the routing of glaciologically constrained freshwater volumes in glacial ocean simulations. Our simulations capture important generally not well-represented small-scale features (boundary currents, eddies). We show that the dilution of freshwater as it is transported to key climate regions reduces the freshening to 20 %–60 %.
Taimaz Bahadory, Lev Tarasov, and Heather Andres
Clim. Past, 17, 397–418, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-397-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-397-2021, 2021
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We present an ensemble of last glacial inception simulations using a fully coupled ice–climate model for the Northern Hemisphere. The ensemble largely captures inferred ice volume changes within proxy uncertainties. Notable features include an ice bridge across Davis Strait and between Greenland and Iceland. Via an equilibrium climate response experiment, we also demonstrate the potential value of fully coupled ice–climate modelling of last glacial inception to constrain future climate change.
Heiko Goelzer, Sophie Nowicki, Anthony Payne, Eric Larour, Helene Seroussi, William H. Lipscomb, Jonathan Gregory, Ayako Abe-Ouchi, Andrew Shepherd, Erika Simon, Cécile Agosta, Patrick Alexander, Andy Aschwanden, Alice Barthel, Reinhard Calov, Christopher Chambers, Youngmin Choi, Joshua Cuzzone, Christophe Dumas, Tamsin Edwards, Denis Felikson, Xavier Fettweis, Nicholas R. Golledge, Ralf Greve, Angelika Humbert, Philippe Huybrechts, Sebastien Le clec'h, Victoria Lee, Gunter Leguy, Chris Little, Daniel P. Lowry, Mathieu Morlighem, Isabel Nias, Aurelien Quiquet, Martin Rückamp, Nicole-Jeanne Schlegel, Donald A. Slater, Robin S. Smith, Fiamma Straneo, Lev Tarasov, Roderik van de Wal, and Michiel van den Broeke
The Cryosphere, 14, 3071–3096, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3071-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3071-2020, 2020
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In this paper we use a large ensemble of Greenland ice sheet models forced by six different global climate models to project ice sheet changes and sea-level rise contributions over the 21st century.
The results for two different greenhouse gas concentration scenarios indicate that the Greenland ice sheet will continue to lose mass until 2100, with contributions to sea-level rise of 90 ± 50 mm and 32 ± 17 mm for the high (RCP8.5) and low (RCP2.6) scenario, respectively.
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Short summary
Physically meaningful modeling of geophysical system instabilities is numerically challenging, given the potential effects of purely numerical artifacts. Here we explore the sensitivity of ice stream surge activation to numerical and physical model aspects. We find that surge characteristics exhibit a resolution dependency but converge at higher horizontal grid resolutions and are significantly affected by the incorporation of bed thermal and sub-glacial hydrology models.
Physically meaningful modeling of geophysical system instabilities is numerically challenging,...
