A flow band model of the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica: Response to CO2‐induced climatic warming

Abstract

A time‐dependent model is applied to the Ross Ice Shelf flow band discharging ice stream B, West Antarctica. The model includes the effects of temperature, depth‐dependent density, and backpressure from the coasts of the Ross embayment and Crary Ice Rise. Data from the Ross Ice Shelf Geophysical and Glaciological Survey and the Siple Coast Project are used as input data. Accuracy and stability are verified by reproducing the flow band for 10,000 model years with equilibrium distributions of accumulation, surface temperature, and basal balance. Sensitivity is tested by forcing the model with increasing accumulation rates, surface temperatures, and basal melt rates, respectively, while other factors are held constant. The response of the ice shelf to three climatic scenarios that may result from increasing carbon dioxide and trace greenhouse gases is simulated. The results range from slight thickening with moderately increased backpressure in the grounding zone to rapid thinning accompanied by rapidly decreasing backpressure during 175‐ to 600‐year simulations, depending primarily upon whether increasing surface temperatures and accumulation rates are accompanied by increased rates of basal melting. The central ice shelf, about 400 km upglacier from the calving front, thins by 22% in 600 years when basal melting is increased linearly to a maximum of 0.5 m/yr after 150 years, then held steady. The ice shelf thins by 40% in 175 years at the same location when basal melting is increased linearly to 2.0 m/yr after 150 years, then held steady. The present calculated equilibrium rate of basal melting, averaged over the bottom surface of the flow band, is 0.17 m/yr.