A new study, headed by researchers from the ULiège Laboratory of Climatology, applying the latest climate models, of which the MAR - developed at ULiège - predicts a 60% greater melting of the Greenland ice sheet than previously predicted.
A new study, headed by researchers from the ULiège Laboratory of Climatology, applying the latest climate models, of which the MAR - developed at ULiège - predicts a 60% greater melting of the Greenland ice sheet than previously predicted. Data that will be included in the next IPCC report. This study has been published in Nature Communications.
The Greenland ice sheet, the second largest after the Antarctic’s, covers an area of 1.7 million square kilometres. Its total melting could lead to a significant rise in ocean levels, up to 7 metres. Although we are not there yet, the previous scenarios predicted by climate models have just been revised upwards, predicting a rise in sea levels of up to 18 cm by 2100 (compared to the 10 cm announced previously) just because of the increase in surface melting. Within the framework of the next IPCC report (AR6) which will appear in 2022, the ULiège Laboratory of climatology has been led to apply, within the framework of the ISMIP6 project, the MAR climate model which it is developing to downscale the old and new IPCC scenarios. The results obtained showed that for the same evolution of greenhouse gas concentrations till 2100, these new scenarios predict a 60% greater surface melting of the Greenland ice cap than previously estimated for the previous IPCC report (AR5, 2013).
ULiège's MAR model was the first to demonstrate that the Greenland ice sheet would melt further with a warming of the Arctic in summer. While our MAR model suggested that in 2100 the surface melting of the Greenland ice sheet would contribute to a rise in the oceans of around ten centimetres in the worst-case scenario (i.e. if we do not change our habits)," explains Stefan Hofer, post-doc researcher at the ULiège Laboratory of Climatology, "our new projections now suggest a rise of 18 cm". As the new IPCC scenarios are based on models whose physics have been improved - in particular by incorporating a better representation of cloudiness - and whose spatial resolution has been increased, these new projections should in theory be more robust and reliable.
Read more at University of Liege
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