Sea Level Fingerprints in a Region of Complex Earth Structure: The Case of WAIS
| Autor: | E. M. Powell, Douglas A. Wiens, Carling C. Hay, Jacqueline Austermann, H. C. P. Lau, Jerry X. Mitrovica, Konstantin Latychev, Natalya Gomez |
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| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
Atmospheric Science
geography geography.geographical_feature_category 010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences Earth structure Climate change Antarctic ice sheet Geophysics engineering.material 010502 geochemistry & geophysics 01 natural sciences Viscoelasticity Lithosphere Climatology engineering Orders of magnitude (length) Ice sheet Geology Sea level 0105 earth and related environmental sciences |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Climate. 30:1881-1892 |
| ISSN: | 1520-0442 0894-8755 |
| DOI: | 10.1175/jcli-d-16-0388.1 |
| Popis: | Sea level fingerprints associated with rapid melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) have generally been computed under the assumption of a purely elastic response of the solid Earth. The authors investigate the impact of viscous effects on these fingerprints by computing gravitationally self-consistent sea level changes that adopt a 3D viscoelastic Earth model in the Antarctic region consistent with available geological and geophysical constraints. In West Antarctica, the model is characterized by a thin (~65 km) elastic lithosphere and sublithospheric viscosities that span three orders of magnitude, reaching values as low as approximately 4 × 1018 Pa s beneath WAIS. Calculations indicate that sea level predictions in the near field of WAIS will depart significantly from elastic fingerprints in as little as a few decades. For example, when viscous effects are included, the peak sea level fall predicted in the vicinity of WAIS during a melt event will increase by about 20% and about 50%, relative to the elastic case, for events of duration 25 and 100 yr, respectively. The results have implications for studies of sea level change due to both ongoing mass loss from WAIS over the next century and future, large-scale collapse of WAIS on centennial-to-millennial time scales. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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