An investigation of the small ice cap instability in the Southern Hemisphere with a coupled atmosphere-sea ice-ocean-terrestrial ice model |
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| Authors: | M A Morales Maqueda A J Willmott J L Bamber M S Darby |
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| Institution: | (1) Department of Mathematics, Keele University, Keele ST5 5BG, UK E-mail: maa21@cc.keele.ac.uk, GB;(2) Centre for Remote Sensing, Department of Geography, University of Bristol, University Rd., Bristol BS8 1SS, UK, GB;(3) Department of Mathematics, University of Exeter, North Park Rd., Exeter EX4 4QE, UK, GB |
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| Abstract: | A simple climate model has been developed to investigate the existence of the small ice cap instability in the Southern Hemisphere.
The model consists of four coupled components: an atmospheric energy balance model, a thermodynamic snow-sea ice model, an
oceanic mixed layer model and a terrestrial ice model. Results from a series of experiments involving different degrees of
coupling in the model show that the instability appears only in those cases when an explicit representation of the Antarctic
ice sheet is not included in the model. In order to determine which physical processes in the ice sheet model lead to a stabilization
of the system we have conducted several sensitivity experiments in each of which a given ice sheet process has been removed
from the control formulation of the model. Results from these experiments suggest that the feedback between the elevation
of the ice sheet and the snow accumulation-ice ablation balance is responsible for the disappearance of the small ice cap
instability in our simulation. In the model, the mass balance of the ice sheet depends on the air temperature at sea level
corrected for altitude and it is, therefore, a function of surface elevation. This altitude-mass balance feedback effectively
decouples the location of the ice edge from any specific sea level isotherm, thus decreasing the model sensitivity to the
albedo-temperature feedback, which is responsible for the appearance of the instability. It is also shown that the elevation-radiative
cooling feedback tends to stabilize the ice sheet, although its effect does not seem to be strong enough to remove the instability.
Another interesting result is that for those simulations which include the terrestrial ice model with elevation-dependent
surface mass balance, hysteresis is exhibited, where for a given level of external forcing, two stable solutions with different,
non-zero ice-sheet volume and area and different air and ocean temperature fields occur. However, no unstable transition between
the two solutions is ever observed. Our results suggest that the small ice cap instability mechanism could be unsuitable for
explaining the inception of glaciation in Antarctica.
Received: 14 April 1997 / Accepted: 22 October 1997 |
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