Davison, BJ orcid.org/0000-0001-9483-2956, Hogg, AE orcid.org/0000-0002-6441-4937
, Rigby, R orcid.org/0000-0001-9554-6054
et al. (6 more authors)
(2023)
Sea level rise from West Antarctic mass loss significantly modified by large snowfall anomalies.
Nature Communications, 14.
1479.
ISSN 2041-1723
Abstract
Mass loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is dominated by glaciers draining into the Amundsen Sea Embayment (ASE), yet the impact of anomalous precipitation on the mass balance of the ASE is poorly known. Here we present a 25-year (1996–2021) record of ASE input-output mass balance and evaluate how two periods of anomalous precipitation affected its sea level contribution. Since 1996, the ASE has lost 3331 ± 424 Gt ice, contributing 9.2 ± 1.2 mm to global sea level. Overall, surface mass balance anomalies contributed little (7.7%) to total mass loss; however, two anomalous precipitation events had larger, albeit short-lived, impacts on rates of mass change. During 2009–2013, persistently low snowfall led to an additional 51 ± 4 Gt yr−1 mass loss in those years (contributing positively to the total loss of 195 ± 4 Gt yr−1). Contrastingly, extreme precipitation in the winters of 2019 and 2020 decreased mass loss by 60 ± 16 Gt yr−1 during those years (contributing negatively to the total loss of 107 ± 15 Gt yr−1). These results emphasise the important impact of extreme snowfall variability on the short-term sea level contribution from West Antarctica.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number European Space Agency 4000135062/21/I-NB European Space Agency 4000132186/20/I-EF NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/T012757/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 01 Mar 2023 10:36 |
Last Modified: | 08 Jun 2023 15:37 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Portfolio |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-023-36990-3 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:196871 |