Modeled Northern Hemisphere ice-sheet-climate interactions and contributions to sea-level change since the Last Glacial Maximum

One of the most recent massive climate change events in earth's history was the last glacial termination 19-9 thousand years before present (ka BP). Northern Hemisphere ice-sheets receded quickly, causing global sea level to rise by more than 100 m, meltwater was injected into the North Atlantic halting its deepwater formation, atmospheric CO2 concentrations rose by almost 100 ppmv, and the global surface warmed by about 4°C. It is still unresolved what exactly caused this deglacial climate change and ice sheet melting. To address this question, we set out to conduct a series of transient modeling experiments with a coupled 3-dimensional ice-sheet-climate model (iLove). The model includes atmosphere-ocean-sea ice-vegetation components of the intermediate complexity model LOVECLIM and uses bi-directional coupling to the ice-sheet model IcIES. Supporting Milankovitch theory, our results indicate that the deglaciation was initiated by orbital parameter changes. However, according to our model, rising CO2 concentrations after 17 ka BP accelerated the deglaciation. Without this deglacial CO2 increase, large parts of North America and Scandinavia would be covered by ice sheets today. Present sea level would be as much as 100 m lower, and still dropping by about 2.5 m per thousand years due to growing ice sheets. Despite the deglacial CO2-rise and global warming of 4°C, the simulated Greenland ice-sheet only looses about 25% of its volume during the deglaciation, and grows again in the Holocene after 8 ka BP at a rate of about 0.1 m sea level equivalent per thousand years. Our results indicate that the stability of the Greenland ice sheet during the deglaciation and Holocene is supported by changes of the atmospheric stationary wave pattern, and by the deglacial sea ice retreat.