Role of Antarctic ice mass balance in present-day sea-level change |
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| Authors: | CK Shum Chung-yen Kuo Jun-yi Guo |
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| Institution: | aGeodetic Science, School of Earth Sciences, The Ohio State University, 125 S Oval Mall, 221B Mendenhall Lab, Columbus, OH 43210-1398, USA;bDepartment of Geomatics, National Cheng-Kung University, Taiwan, ROC |
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| Abstract: | The Antarctic ice sheet is arguably the most critical in terms of future sea-level rise, primarily because it contains  70% of the world's fresh water. While there exists evidence of accelerated ice-sheet ablation during the past decade, the possibility that the ice sheets contributed little to 20th century sea-level rise could result in Antarctica becoming the largest contributor to sea-level rise during the 21st century. Here we review the findings of studies published following the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) study, focusing on the role of Antarctica in present-day (1992–2006) sea-level rise. We show that the choice of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) model significantly affects GRACE-estimated Antarctic mass loss, adding 0.25–0.45 mm/yr to the estimate of sea-level rise. The current estimate of Antarctica's contribution to sea-level rise has a wide range: from −0.12 to +0.52 mm/yr. The discrepancy between observed sea-level trend of 1.8 mm/yr and those estimated from various geophysical sources (2.10 ± 0.99 mm/yr) is 0.30 mm/yr. The role of Antarctica in sea-level rise might be better constrained by lengthening satellite observations, using long-term GPS data to discriminate subglacial vertical motion from ice mass balance, and detecting the sea-level signal due to elastic loading from the melting ice-sheets. |
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| Keywords: | Antarctic ice sheet mass balance Sea level Satellite geodesy Glacial isostatic adjustment International Polar Year |
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