Abrupt increase in Greenland melt governed by atmospheric wave change

Abstract

Recent Greenland ice-sheet melt constitutes an alarming contribution to global sea-level rise. Observations indicate an approximate balance of the ice sheet until the late 1990s, after which a strong increase in melting occurred. This cannot be attributed linearly to gradually-increasing global warming. Instead the abrupt shift is suggested to be linked to atmospheric circulation changes, although causality is not fully understood. Here we show that changes of atmospheric waves over Greenland have significantly contributed to the shift into a strong melting state. This is evident from applying a newly-developed methodology effectively decomposing atmospheric flow patterns into parts associated with Rossby waves and smaller perturbations. A westerly-flow reduction, consistent with anthropogenic Arctic warming, affected transports by atmospheric waves and led to a decrease in precipitation and an increase in surface warming, contributing to ice-sheet mass loss, in particular over the southwestern regions. Hence the Greenland ice-sheet melt is an example of a climate response non-linearly coupled to global warming.