One Step Closer to More Accurate Sea Level Rise Predictions?
26.11.2010 - Water & Oceans, Ice & Snow, Bi-polar
Jeremy Bassis, an assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences at the University of Michigan, has developed a new theory to describe the calving from ice sheets and glaciers, which he says will bring scientists one step closer to understanding the impact of a warming climate on sea level rise.
The process of ice calving hasn’t been very well understood; however scientists believe iceberg calving accounts for roughly half of the mass loss from ice sheets. The new theory, detailed in a paper published the Journal of Glaciology, will fill an important gap in current models, which do not bring calving into account for the predictions. These models, says Bassis, “[…] cannot predict about half of the mass balance” whereas there are “[…] several prominent examples where calving is connected with speed-up of the ice-retreat process.”
What has been lacking “[…] is a way to quantify whether calving will increase or decrease in the future, and do it in a way that doesn't involve information from a particular glacier,” according to Bassis. “We'd like to have a theory that explains how this happens for any regime and this is a step in that direction.”
Bassis' theory allows for a new way to predict the average iceberg calving rate and evaluate the possible fluctuations in a given region based on the stress within the ice and its thickness. By developing a more generalized model than existing ones, Bassis could contribute to reduce the margin of error in estimating future sea level rise.
