On Deriving Requirements for the Surface Mass Balance forcing of a Greenland Ice Sheet Model using Uncertainty Analyses

Abstract:

During July of 2012, the percentage of the Greenland surface exposed to melt was the largest in recorded history. And, even though evidence of increased melt rates had been captured by remote sensing observations throughout the last decade, this particular event took the community by surprise. How Greenland ice flow will respond to such an event or to increased frequencies of extreme melt events in the future is unclear, as it requires detailed comprehension of Greenland surface climate and the ice sheet's sensitivity to associated uncertainties. With established uncertainty quantification (UQ) tools embedded within the Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM), we conduct decadal-scale forward modeling experiments to 1) quantify the spatial resolution needed to effectively force surface mass balance (SMB) in various regions of the ice sheet and 2) determine the dynamic response of Greenland outlet glaciers to variations in SMB. First, we perform sensitivity analyses to determine how perturbations in SMB affect model output; results allow us to investigate the locations where variations most significantly affect ice flow, and on what spatial scales. Next, we apply Monte-Carlo style sampling analyses to determine how errors in SMB propagate through the model as uncertainties in estimates of Greenland ice discharge and regional mass balance.

This work is performed at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Cryosphere Program.