G012-0003
Sea level fingerprints associated with future ice sheet mass changes
Monday, 14 December 2020
Poster
Shujing Zhang, University of Tasmania, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Hobart, TAS, Australia, Xuebin Zhang, CSIRO, Oceans & Atmosphere, Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research (CSHOR), Hobart, TAS, Australia, Matt A King, University of Tasmania, Surveying and Spatial Sciences, School of Technology, Environments and Design, Hobart, TAS, Australia and Steven J Phipps, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney, Australia
Abstract:
Mass changes of land ice (e.g., glaciers and ice sheets) lead to a geographically variable pattern in regional sea level, also called “sea level fingerprints”. Sea level fingerprints associated with contemporary land ice mass changes can be derived by solving the sea level equation, in which changes in Earth’s gravity and rotation, and viscoelastic solid-earth deformation are included. However, current sea level fingerprint products are generally limited to coarse resolutions due to high computational cost. Uncertainties in sea level fingerprints also arise due to the limited spatial resolutions at which the ice mass changes are represented and the choice of 1-D elastic Earth models to represent a complex 3-D Earth.
In our research, we use the sea level fingerprint module of the Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM), recently developed by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). With unstructured mesh grid, ISSM sea level module can provide high-resolution sea level fingerprints in response to latest projections of polar ice sheet mass changes in the 21st century, including an ensemble simulation of Antarctic Ice Sheet based on the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM). We also explore the sensitivity of sea level fingerprints to different 1-D elastic Earth models and the spatial resolution at which mass change of polar ice sheets is resolved. Furthermore, sea level contributions by individual polar ice sheet drainage basins in the 21st century are also estimated for some coastal cities of interest (e.g., Perth) in this research.
