Here, we implement a basal ice shelf melt module (PICO – Postdam Ice-shelf Cavity mOdel) in an ice sheet model (GRISLI) and test six simple statistical methods to calibrate this module. We show that calculating the mean absolute error of bins best fits the observational datasets under multiple conditions and without using temperature corrections. Additionally, we show that calibration at a smaller scale than all Antarctic ice shelves is not needed. Finally, we assess the impact with future projections until 2300.