A simple, physically motivated model of sea-level contributions from the Greenland ice sheet in response to temperature changes

Alexander M.R. Bakker, Patrick J. Applegate, Klaus Keller

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

Sea level could rise by several meters over the next centuries. The Greenland ice sheet could be an important contributor to future sea-level rise, because of its large volume and its high sensitivity to surface air temperature increases. Frameworks for the integrated climate risk management often require fast, simplified treatments of sea-level rise, in particular for estimating the risks associated with low probabilities but potentially high impacts. State-of-the-art ice sheet models provide important insights, but are often computationally too demanding to evaluate tail-area risks. Here we present SIMPLE, a physically motivated model of the Greenland ice sheet in response to temperature changes. SIMPLE can skillfully reproduce the results from a three-dimensional ice sheet model and outperforms existing simple models, after similar calibration. We anticipate that SIMPLE will be calibrated to other ice sheet models and can provide a fast approximation (emulator) for such models in studies that require many model evaluations.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)27-35
Number of pages9
JournalEnvironmental Modelling and Software
Volume83
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 1 2016

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software
  • Environmental Engineering
  • Ecological Modeling

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