Project Details
Projekt Print View

Modeling the Greenland ice sheet response to climate change on different timescales

Subject Area Atmospheric Science
Term from 2011 to 2016
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 196658745
 
Final Report Year 2015

Final Report Abstract

The Greenland ice sheet could potentially contribute up to 7 m to sea level rise in the coming millennia due to anthropogenic global warming and it was shown that if the global Earth’s temperature will exceed a certain threshold value, the Greenland ice sheet will eventually melt completely. However, the magnitude of global warming which will lead to crossing this threshold is not well known. The sensitivity of the ice sheet to climate change on long timescales will largely depend on surface mass balance change. In this project we developed a novel and computationally efficient approach for modeling the surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet by using a regional climate model of intermediate complexity. This model can be used for long-term simulations of the Greenland ice sheet under different climate change scenarios and thus contribute to improvement of the projections of the Greenland Ice Sheet contribution to future sea level rise as well as to the assessment of the probability of irreversible changes in the Earth system.

Publications

 
 

Additional Information

Textvergrößerung und Kontrastanpassung