Ice sheet mass balance and sea level rise

In an article titled “Ice sheets and seal level: thinking outside the box” [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10712-011-9137-z]  authors indicate that over a 10 year period (1993-2003) sea level rise (SLR) averaged a rate of 3.1 ±0.4 mm/year with thermal expansion contributing about 1.6±0.3 mm/year. Their figure 2 shows mass exchanges for the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) and the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS). 

 

In this figure, green represents solid ice discharge and ice sheet mass balance in red. Surface mass balance is show in blue. They conclude that combined mass loss from AIS and GRIS contributes 1.1±0.4mm/year of SLR over the 6 year period (2003-2008) with 40% from the AIS and 60% from GrIS. During the preceding 10 year period (1993-2003) contributions to SLR are estimated to be approximately 0.4±0.4mm/year. This data comes from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites. To learn more about the GRACE visit [https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/index.html] where you will see the latest plot of Antarctic ice mass change in gigatonnes.

Another interesting article presents a linear relationship between global mean sea level rise and increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations [http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.ajee.20160602.03.html]. The authors note the model is oversimplified and that the relationships is multivariate. This shows the first order influence of CO2 and indicates that ablation has exceeded accumulation leading to net sea level rise along with volume expansion. The article includes plots of GMSLR from thermal expansion, the correlation between GMSLR and CO2 (below) along with many other interesting plots.

 

Overall we see that the rate of ice sheet mass loss has increased since 2003 relative to the preceding 10 years.