The Response of the Southern Ocean and Antarctic Sea Ice to Freshwater from Ice Shelves in an Earth System Model

Abstract

ABSTRACT The possibility that recent Antarctic sea ice expansion resulted from an increase in freshwater reaching the Southern Ocean is investigated here. The freshwater flux from ice sheet and ice shelf mass imbalance is largely missing in models that participated in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). However, on average, precipitation minus evaporation (P − E) reaching the Southern Ocean has increased in CMIP5 models to a present value that is about greater than preindustrial times and 5–22 times larger than estimates of the mass imbalance of Antarctic ice sheets and shelves (119–544 ). Two sets of experiments were conducted from 1980 to 2013 in CESM1(CAM5), one of the CMIP5 models, artificially distributing freshwater either at the ocean surface to mimic iceberg melt or at the ice shelf fronts at depth. An anomalous reduction in vertical advection of heat into the surface mixed layer resulted in sea surface cooling at high southern latitudes and an associated increase in sea ice area. Enhancing the freshwater input by an amount within the range of estimates of the Antarctic mass imbalance did not have any significant effect on either sea ice area magnitude or trend. Freshwater enhancement of raised the total sea ice area by 1 × 106 km2, yet this and even an enhancement of was insufficient to offset the sea ice decline due to anthropogenic forcing for any period of 20 years or longer. Further, the sea ice response was found to be insensitive to the depth of freshwater injection.