Antarctic Mass Balance and High-end Cases: Status and Future Prospects for Guidance on Sea-level
Abstract
Relative sea-level projections based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), and taking into account vertical land motion measured by GPS, have been generated for a number of jurisdictions. Post-AR5 publications document advances in understanding, and new questions, relevant to global sea-level. In particular, questions relating to the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet bring into prominence the potential importance of processes contributing to much larger rates of ice discharge into the oceans than given in the AR5. We interrogate recent process-based modelling results that incorporate recent findings to update the AR5 results. Our approach combines the probability density function (pdf) for process-modelling publications focusing on Antarctica to generate an average pdf. Preliminary results indicate that the mean Antarctic contribution (for a high-emissions scenario for 2100) is increased by 15-20 cm from the AR5. Various approaches for assessing a high-end case (or, alternatively, the high-end tail of a derived probability distribution) are also under consideration that includes evaluation of semi-empirical modelling and expert elicitation results. Combined with updates to other components that contribute to global sea levels, mean and high-end cases are generated in support of updated global and relative sea-level projections.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMGC11M1188J
- Keywords:
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- 0798 Modeling;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 1621 Cryospheric change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1641 Sea level change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 6309 Decision making under uncertainty;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES