Greenland: modelling

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511535659.013

11 - Greenland: modelling

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 October 2009

Roderik S. W. Van De Wal

Edited by

Jonathan L. Bamber and

Antony J. Payne

Foreword by

John Houghton

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Roderik S. W. Van De Wal: Affiliation:
Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, Utrecht University
Jonathan L. Bamber: Affiliation:
University of Bristol
Antony J. Payne: Affiliation:
University of Bristol

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Summary

Introduction

Modelling the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet is a way to improve our understanding of the processes that are important for the behaviour of the ice sheet. Models are tools to find out whether we can explain the observations and extrapolate them to areas for which no observations are available. The purpose of mass balance models is to relate mass balance to the prevailing or changing climate. This offers the possibility to predict how the ice sheet responds to climatic change. Changes in the ice flow have response times of the order of 104 years and are determined by isostasy and thermodynamics. Changes in the specific mass balance can be much faster. For the Greenland ice sheet, under the present-day climate, the long-term dynamic imbalance is probably small (Church et al., 2001; Huybrechts and De Wolde, 1999). For this reason, the main focus of this chapter will be on modelling the specific mass balance. Changes in accumulation and ablation due to climate changes can contribute significantly to sea-level changes on 100-year timescales. To study this, several mass balance models for the Greenland ice sheet are used. We can distinguish three categories of models:

general circulation models;
parameterized models;
boundary layer models.

General circulation models (GCMs.) take into account changes in the atmospheric circulation in a realistic manner, which is why they are particularly useful for calculating (changes in) accumulation. They are, however, not yet very appropriate for ablation calculations, as will become clear later in this chapter.

Type: Chapter
Information: Mass Balance of the Cryosphere
Observations and Modelling of Contemporary and Future Changes
, pp. 437 - 458

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511535659.013 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2004

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