Is ice sheet collapse in West Antarctica unstoppable?
Abstract
Forty years ago, Mercer raised an alarm by connecting climate warming with collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and substantial sea level rise in both the past and future (1). Since then, observations have proliferated, yielding improved understanding of ice sheet processes and making clear that the WAIS is highly vulnerable to future climate change (2). Yet, despite this progress, projections of the future rate of change can vary by a factor of 10 for the same climate warming scenario, producing different time scales for collapse; whether the model ice sheets collapse depends on the level of warming (3, 4). Better understanding of the different model outcomes can help to inform how we set greenhouse gas emissions goals and plan for future sea level rise.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Already a Subscriber?Sign In
References and Notes
1
J. H. Mercer, Nature 271, 321 (1978).
2
R. B. Alley, Ann. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 43, 207 (2015).
3
R. M. DeConto, D. Pollard, Nature 531, 591 (2016).
4
N. R. Golledge et al., Nature 526, 421 (2015).
5
C. Schoof, J. Geophys. Res. 112, F03S28 (2007).
6
A. A. Robel, C. Schoof, E. Tziperman, Cryosphere 10, 1883 (2016).
7
D. Goldberg, D. M. Holland, C. Schoof, J. Geophys. Res. Earth Surf. 114, F04026 (2009).
8
K. Matsuoka et al., Earth Sci. Rev. 150, 724 (2015).
9
L. Favier, F. Pattyn, Geophys. Res. Lett. 42, 4456 (2015).
10
F. S. Paolo, H. A. Fricker, L. Padman, Science 348, 327 (2015).
11
Scenarios developed for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report are used to drive the models in (3) and (4). At the lower end of the range is the so-called Representative Carbon Pathway 2.6, a low greenhouse gas emissions scenario in which radiative forcing rises to 3.1 W m−2 [about 490 parts per million (ppm) CO2 equivalent] between 2010 and 2020 before declining to 2.6 W m−2 by 2100.
12
T. A. Scambos et al., Glob. Planet. Chang. 153, 16 (2017).
13
K. L. Ruckert et al., PLOS ONE 12, e0170052 (2017).
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Science
Volume 356 | Issue 6341
2 June 2017
2 June 2017
Copyright
Copyright © 2017, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Published in print: 2 June 2017
Acknowledgments
The author is funded by the New Zealand Antarctic Research Institute award (NZARI RFP 2014- 2 “Vulnerability of the Ross Ice Shelf in a Warming World”).
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Article Usage
Altmetrics
Citations
Export citation
Select the format you want to export the citation of this publication.
View Options
Get Access
Log in to view the full text
AAAS login provides access to Science for AAAS members, and access to other journals in the Science family to users who have purchased individual subscriptions.
- Become a AAAS Member
- Activate your Account
- Purchase Access to Other Journals in the Science Family
- Account Help
Log in via OpenAthens.
Log in via Shibboleth.
More options
Purchase digital access to this article
Download and print this article for your personal scholarly, research, and educational use.
Buy a single issue of Science for just $15 USD.
View options
PDF format
Download this article as a PDF file
Download PDF