Identification

Title

Influence of continental ice retreat on future global climate

Abstract

Evidence from observations indicates a net loss of global land-based ice and a rise of global sea level. Other than sea level rise, it is not clear how this loss of land-based ice could affect other aspects of global climate in the future. Here, the authors use the Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3) to evaluate the potential influence of shrinking land-based ice on the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and surface climate in the next two centuries under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A1B scenario with prescribed rates of melting for the Greenland Ice Sheet, West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and mountain glaciers and ice caps. Results show that the AMOC, in general, is only sensitive to the freshwater discharge directly into the North Atlantic over the next two centuries. If the loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would not significantly increase from its current rate, it would not have much effect on the AMOC. The AMOC slows down further only when the surface freshwater input due to runoff from land-based ice melt becomes large enough to generate a net freshwater gain in the upper North Atlantic. This further-weakened AMOC does not cool the global mean climate, but it does cause less warming, especially in the northern high latitudes and, in particular, in Europe. The projected precipitation increase in North America in the standard run becomes a net reduction in the simulation that includes land ice runoff, but there are precipitation increases in west Australia in the simulations where the AMOC slows down because of the inclusion of land-based ice runoff.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7057gsm

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

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End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2013-05-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2013 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact