The Mutual Interaction between Continental-Scale Ice Sheets and Atmospheric Stationary Waves

Abstract

The great continental ice sheets of the Pleistocene represented significant obstacles to the Northern Hemisphere midlatitude westerlies. They must therefore have forced large changes in the atmospheric circulation, and consequently also in the patterns of accumulation and melting over the ice sheets themselves. A simplified three-dimensional coupled ice sheet–stationary wave model is developed in order to understand the ice sheet’s response to the circulation changes that it induces. Consistent with ice age climate simulations, the ice sheet topography induces an anticyclonic circulation over the ice sheet, causing a slight warming over the western slopes and a stronger cooling over the remainder. The modeled feedbacks significantly affect the ice sheet configuration, with the most important influences being the patterns of summer temperature, and the topographically induced precipitation field. The time evolution of the ice sheet is also changed by the atmospheric feedbacks and the results suggest the possibility of multiple equilibrium solutions.