In a new climate modeling study that looked at the impacts of accelerated ice melt from the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) on future climate, a team of climate scientists reports that future ice-sheet melt is expected to have significant effects on global climate.
In a new climate modeling study that looked at the impacts of accelerated ice melt from the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) on future climate, a team of climate scientists reports that future ice-sheet melt is expected to have significant effects on global climate.
First author and graduate student Shaina Sadai at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with Alan Condron of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Rob DeConto at UMass Amherst and David Pollard at Pennsylvania State University, present details this week in Science Advances.
Their study predicts how future climate conditions could change under high- and low-greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, while accounting for accelerated melting of the AIS.
Scientists have long recognized that future meltwater input from the Antarctic will affect the Southern Ocean and global climate, but ice-sheet processes are not now included in most state-of-the-art climate prediction simulations, Sadai says. She and colleagues report that their modeling with the added ice melt information reveals interacting processes.
Read more at University of Massachusetts Amherst
Image: Antarctica seen from the R/V Laurence M. Gould. A team of climate scientists at UMass Amherst and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute have published a new model that incorporates accelerated AIS melting and icebergs into simulations of Earth's future climate. (Credit: Dan Lowenstein © WHOI)
