The Earth's Cryosphere and Sea Level Change

ISBN-13: 9789400720626 / Angielski / Twarda / 2011 / 343 str.

Lennart Bengtsson;Simeon Koumoutsaris;R.-M. Bonnet

Opis

This book gives a comprehensive overview of our present understanding of the Earth's cryosphere, its changes and their consequences for mean sea level changes. Since the middle of the 19th century there has been an increase of sea level height by 20-25 cm. Some 8-10 cm of this is due to net losses from glaciers, the remainder being due to mass losses from land ice and thermal expansion of the oceans. The mean sea level rise is slowly accelerating; at present it is some 3 mm/year. Recent space observations made by the GRACE satellite combined with ocean temperature and volume measurements have enabled the separate contributions to sea level rise from melting ice and from thermal expansion to be better estimated. The estimation of mean sea level change is complicated by changes in land level due to tectonic effects and to ongoing changes following the latest major glaciation. The book gives an up-to-date survey of our present knowledge of this crucial subject.

Spis treści

Foreword

Introduction

Climate change challenges

Section I: Long-term variation of the Earth’s cryosphere

Climates of the Earth and cryosphere evolution

Section II: Observational studies on land ices

Overview and assessment of Antarctic ice-sheet mass balance estimates: 1992 - 2009

Present day regional mass loss of Greenland observed with satellite gravimetry

Interaction between the warm subsurface Atlantic water in the Sermilik Fjord and Helheim glacier in southeast Greenland                       

Section III: The dynamics of land ices

Response of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to multi-millennial greenhouse warming in the Earth system model of intermediate complexity LOVECLIM

Representing grounding line dynamics in numerical ice sheet models. Recent advances and outlook

Understanding and modelling rapid dynamic changes of tidewater outlet glaciers: issues and implications

Section IV: Modelling of the mass balance of the land ices

Large-scale surface mass balance of ice sheets from a comprehensive atmospheric model

Precipitation changes in high southern latitudes from global reanalyses: A cautionary tale

Ice sheets and sea level: thinking outside the box

A downscaling approach towards high-resolution surface mass balance over Antarctica

Section V: Glacier observation and modelling

Estimating the glacier contribution to sea-level rise for the period 1800-2005

Observed mass balance of mountain glaciers and Greenland ice sheet in the 20^th century and the present trends

Present state and prospects of ice sheet and glacier modeling

Section VI: Sea level and geodynamic effects

Sea-level rise from the late 19^th to the early 21^st century

Evidence for century-timescale acceleration in mean sea levels and for recent changes in extreme sea levels

Response of a coupled ocean-atmosphere model to Greenland ice melting

GOCE, satellite gravimetry and Antarctic mass transports

Blurb

This book gives a comprehensive overview of our present understanding of the Earth’s cryosphere, its changes and their consequences for mean sea level changes. Since the middle of the 19th century there has been an increase of sea level height by 20-25 cm. Some 10 cm of this is due to net losses from glaciers, the remainder being due to mass losses from land ice and thermal expansion of the oceans. The mean sea level rise is slowly accelerating; at present it is some 3 mm/year. Recent space observations made by the GRACE satellite combined with ocean temperature and volume measurements have enabled the separate contributions to sea level rise from melting ice and from thermal expansion to be better estimated. The estimation of mean sea level change is complicated by changes in land level due to tectonic effects and to ongoing changes following the most recent major glaciation. The book gives an up-to-date survey of our present knowledge of this crucial subject.

Reprinted from Surveys in Geophysics 32:4-5 (2011).