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Greenland’s contribution to global sea-level rise by the end of the 21st century

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Abstract

The Greenland ice sheet holds enough water to raise the global sea level with ∼7 m. Over the last few decades, observations manifest a substantial increase of the mass loss of this ice sheet. Both enhanced melting and increase of the dynamical discharge, associated with calving at the outlet-glacier fronts, are contributing to the mass imbalance. Using a dynamical and thermodynamical ice-sheet model, and taking into account speed up of outlet glaciers, we estimate Greenland’s contribution to the 21st-century global sea-level rise and the uncertainty of this estimate. Boundary fields of temperature and precipitation extracted from coupled climate-model projections used for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, are applied to the ice-sheet model. We implement a simple parameterization for increased flow of outlet glaciers, which decreases the bias of the modeled present-day surface height. It also allows for taking into account the observed recent increase in dynamical discharge, and it can be used for future projections associated with outlet-glacier speed up. Greenland contributes 0–17 cm to global sea-level rise by the end of the 21st century. This range includes the uncertainties in climate-model projections, the uncertainty associated with scenarios of greenhouse-gas emissions, as well as the uncertainties in future outlet-glacier discharge. In addition, the range takes into account the uncertainty of the ice-sheet model and its boundary fields.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to Wouter Greuell, Frank Selten, Caroline Katsman, Bert Wouters as well as two anonymous reviewers for useful comments on the manuscript. The authors would like to acknowledge Janneke Ettema for providing RACMO precipitation data, Michiel van den Broeke for RACMO mass-balance data, and Bo Vinther for providing the GRIP ice-core data. R. Graversen is funded by Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, The Netherlands, within the project Abrupt Climate Scenarios.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, Wilhelminalaan 10, 3732, De Bilt, The Netherlands

    Rune G. Graversen

  2. Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, De Bilt, The Netherlands

    Sybren Drijfhout, Wilco Hazeleger & Richard Bintanja

  3. Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Roderik van de Wal & Michiel Helsen

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  1. Rune G. Graversen
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Correspondence to Rune G. Graversen.

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Graversen, R.G., Drijfhout, S., Hazeleger, W. et al. Greenland’s contribution to global sea-level rise by the end of the 21st century. Clim Dyn 37, 1427–1442 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-010-0918-8

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