Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
The tipping points and early warning indicators for Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica
Stockholm University, Faculty of Science, Stockholm Resilience Centre. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-5233-7703
Show others and affiliations
Number of Authors: 62021 (English)In: The Cryosphere, ISSN 1994-0416, E-ISSN 1994-0424, Vol. 15, no 3, p. 1501-1516Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Mass loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet is the main source of uncertainty in projections of future sea-level rise, with important implications for coastal regions worldwide. Central to ongoing and future changes is the marine ice sheet instability: once a critical threshold, or tipping point, is crossed, ice internal dynamics can drive a self-sustaining retreat committing a glacier to irreversible, rapid and substantial ice loss. This process might have already been triggered in the Amundsen Sea region, where Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers dominate the current mass loss from Antarctica, but modelling and observational techniques have not been able to establish this rigorously, leading to divergent views on the future mass loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Here, we aim at closing this knowledge gap by conducting a systematic investigation of the stability regime of Pine Island Glacier. To this end we show that early warning indicators in model simulations robustly detect the onset of the marine ice sheet instability. We are thereby able to identify three distinct tipping points in response to increases in ocean-induced melt. The third and final event, triggered by an ocean warming of approximately 1.2 degrees C from the steady-state model configuration, leads to a retreat of the entire glacier that could initiate a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2021. Vol. 15, no 3, p. 1501-1516
National Category
Earth and Related Environmental Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-193126DOI: 10.5194/tc-15-1501-2021ISI: 000634741800001OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-193126DiVA, id: diva2:1554497
Available from: 2021-05-14 Created: 2021-05-14 Last updated: 2025-02-07Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full text

Authority records

Donges, Jonathan F.Gudmundsson, G. Hilmar

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Donges, Jonathan F.Gudmundsson, G. Hilmar
By organisation
Stockholm Resilience Centre
In the same journal
The Cryosphere
Earth and Related Environmental Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 16 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf