Comments on: New Antarctic Glacial Melt Study Slightly Increases IPCC Rate Estimate

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By: Antarctic Ice Melting: Tamsin Edwards Responds to Richard Alley – Greg Laden's Blog

Tue, 15 Dec 2015 18:21:44 +0000

[…] November, I wrote a post describing research on Antarctic glacial melting by Catherine Ritz, Tamsin Edwards, Gaël Durand, Antony Payne, Vincent Peyaud, and Richard […]

By: Antarctic Ice Sheet Deterioration Study Left Out Important Factors – Greg Laden's Blog

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 01:26:02 +0000

[…] impression of the study, which I partially wrote up here, was that there were two possible problems. One derives from those earlier higher-end estimates […]

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 14:27:13 +0000

SLR as a factor is interesting and I had been wondering about that as well.

By: BBD

BBD — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 08:52:04 +0000

As GL says, yes but palaeoclimate.

The various meltwater pulses during deglaciation are suggestive that land based ice sheets can undergo episodes of rapid collapse leading to SLR of 10m – 20m in 500 y or less.

It’s hard to be sanguine about the effects of unprecedented forcing increase on a marine ice sheet like the WAIS, given the inherent instability of marine ice sheets.

Evidence of abrupt ice sheet collapse in the past points to the nonlinear (with basal melt / lubrication as a key factor). This suggests that calibrating models to present ice sheet behaviour as this study apparently does is unlikely to yield reliable information about future ice sheet behaviour.

Something that I don’t think this paper addresses (on a very quick scan through) is the amplifying effect of SLR on melt rate. Future SLR along the WAIS coast will incorporate contributions from all global sources and the geoid itself. Presumably, the effect will be to accelerate the penetration of sea water beneath the ice sheet.

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Loved the ‘physicist, palaeoclimatologist and engineer at a wedding’ story BTW.