Epistemology of Ice Sheet Change
Abstract
Recent change in the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets is observed as surface lowering accompanied by speed up of the ice. One of two types of perturbation is usually invoked to account for these changes, unbalanced forces at either the bed or at the marine margin of the ice sheet. The former is linked to change in meltwater at the bed while the latter is linked to a change in the temperature of the ocean near the margin. Observational data have been used together with numerical models to reproduce both cases. What we ask here is whether or not there is anything distinctive in the observed patterns of change that warrants preferring one type of perturbation over the other. That is, our interest is epistemological: is there anything distinctive in the pattern of ice sheet response to environmental forcing that allows the correct forcing to be identified using observational data? We hypothesize that specific changes in ice dynamics—perturbation at the bed or at the margin—lead to unique patterns of change in ice sheet flow, and thus geometry. For example, ocean warming may have its largest expression close to the coast and then propagate into the interior on time and spatial scales set by the material properties of the ice and various boundary conditions. Other perturbations may yield different patterns. The hypothesis is tested using an ice sheet model and a set of simple perturbations that represent environmental changes that might drive ice sheet change. We use surface lowering (ice thinning) as our indicator of change and conduct an EOF analysis to identify modes in that time dependent field. If leading modes derived from different perturbation experiments are distinguishable, the null hypothesis—that there is nothing diagnostic in the observed changes—is rejected and we conclude that observed patterns of change in ice sheets may be used to identify underlying causes for that change. This, in turn, would yield normal mode "finger prints" for different types of perturbations that could be used to interpret observed patterns of change.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.C31B0614W
- Keywords:
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- 0726 CRYOSPHERE / Ice sheets;
- 0774 CRYOSPHERE / Dynamics;
- 0798 CRYOSPHERE / Modeling