Modelled glacier response to centennial temperature and prec

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TitleModelled glacier response to centennial temperature and precipitation trends on the Antarctic PeninsulaAbstractThe northern Antarctic Peninsula is currently undergoing rapid atmospheric warming. Increased glacier-surface melt during the twentieth century has contributed to ice-shelf collapse and the widespread acceleration, thinning and recession of glaciers. Therefore, glaciers peripheral to the Antarctic Ice Sheet currently make a large contribution to eustatic sea-level rise, but future melting may be offset by increased precipitation. Here we assess glacier-climate relationships both during the past and into the future, using ice-core and geological data and glacier and climate numerical model simulations. Focusing on Glacier IJR45 on James Ross Island, northeast Antarctic Peninsula, our modelling experiments show that this representative glacier is most sensitive to temperature change, not precipitation change. We determine that its most recent expansion occurred during the late Holocene a Little Ice Age Ìand not during the warmer mid-Holocene, as previously proposed. Simulations using a range of future Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate scenarios indicate that future increases in precipitation are unlikely to offset atmospheric-warming-induced melt of peripheral Antarctic Peninsula glaciers. Copyright 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.AcknowledgementsThis work was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under the Antarctic Funding Initiative grant (NE/F012942/1), awarded to N.F.G. and M.J.H., and a SCAR (Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research) Fellowship awarded to B.J.D. to visit the Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington. Transport logistics and fieldwork on James Ross Island were supported by the British Antarctic Survey, and we thank the captain and crew of the RRS Ernest Shackleton and the RRS James Clark Ross for their support. We thank A. Hill for his field logistical support. We thank the Czech Geological Survey for providing topographical and glaciological data. N. Abram provided a thinning and ice-flow-corrected ice-core accumulation record from the 2007 James Ross Island ice core (AD 1807--2007). We also acknowledge the Netherlands Polar Program of NWO/ALW and the ice2sea project, funded by the European CommissionÅ› 7th Framework Programme through grant number 226375, ice2sea manuscript number 174.

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1st AuthorDavies, B.AuthorDavies, B.Golledge, N.Glasser, N.Carrivick, J.Ligtenberg, S.Barrand, N.Van Den Broeke, M.Hambrey, M.Smellie, J.Year2014JournalNature Climate ChangeVolume4Number11Pages993-998DOI10.1038/nclimate2369URLhttps://www.scopus.com/inward/recor.....3c0fbe9fae499b8ac31685a3dKeywordsclimate modelingglacier advanceglacier dynamicsice sheetmeltingprecipitation (climatology)temperature effect, Antarctic PeninsulaAntarcticaJames Ross IslandWest Antarctica, rank1

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TypeArticleCitationDavies, B., Golledge, N., Glasser, N., Carrivick, J., Ligtenberg, S., Barrand, N., Van Den Broeke, M., Hambrey, M. and Smellie, J. (2014). Modelled glacier response to centennial temperature and precipitation trends on the Antarctic Peninsula. Nature Climate Change, 4(11): 993-998 IdentifierDavies2014Relevancerank1