Reply on RC1

Abstract. The configuration of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets during the Penultimate Glacial Maximum differed to the Last Glacial Maximum. However, the reasons for this are not yet fully understood. These differences likely contributed to the varied deglaciation pathways experienced following the glacial maxima and may have had consequences for the interglacial sea level rise. To understand the differences between the North American Ice Sheet at the Last and Penultimate glacial maxima (21 and 140 ka), we perform two perturbed-physics ensembles of 62 simulations using a coupled atmosphere–ice sheet model, FAMOUS-ice, with prescribed surface ocean conditions, in which the North American and Greenland ice sheets are dynamically simulated with the Glimmer ice sheet model. We apply an implausibility metric to find ensemble members that match reconstructed ice extent and volumes at the Last and Penultimate glacial maxima. We use a resulting set of “plausible” parameters to perform sensitivity experiments to decompose the role of climate forcings (orbit, greenhouse gases) and initial conditions on the final ice sheet configurations. This confirms that the initial ice sheet conditions used in the model are extremely important in determining the difference in final ice volumes between both periods due to the large effect of the ice–albedo feedback. In contrast to evidence of a smaller Penultimate North American Ice Sheet, our results show that the climate boundary conditions at these glacial maxima, if considered in isolation, imply a larger Penultimate Glacial Maximum North American Ice Sheet than at the Last Glacial Maximum by around 6 m sea level equivalent. This supports the notion that the growth of the ice sheet prior to the glacial maxima is key in explaining the differences in North American ice volume.

<p>During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 23,000 to 19,000 years ago), the Patagonian Ice Sheet (PIS) covered the central chain of the Andes between ~ 38 °S to 55 °S. From limited paleoclimatic evidence, especially that derived from glacial landforms, it becomes clear that maximum ice sheet expansions in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres were not synchronized. However, large uncertainties still exist in the timing of the onset of regional deglaciation as well as its major drivers. Ice sheet modelling combined with glacial geochronology and paleoclimate reconstructions can provide important information on the PIS geometry, ice volume and its contribution to the sea level low during the LGM. It can also help to test different paleoclimate scenarios and identify climate models that capture regional climate responses to the global change in a realistic manner.</p><p>Here we present an ensemble of numerical simulations of the PIS during the LGM with an aim to constrain the most likely LGM climate conditions that can explain the reconstructed geometry of the PIS in a satisfactory manner. The PIS model is driven by the climate forcing that fuse near-surface air temperatures and precipitation rates from the ERA5 reanalysis with the paleoclimate model outputs from the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project (PMIP2 and PMIP3) and the in-house Community Earth System Model (CESM) experiments. Our analysis suggests a strong dependence of the PIS geometry on the near-surface air temperature forcing. All the ensemble experiments designed with PMIP and in-house CESM experiments fail to reproduce the ice sheet extent between 38 and 42 °S. The most realistic performance for the LGM ice sheet extents south of 38 °S has been derived using those climate models that have a higher spatial resolution. The latter helps these models to capture regional climate conditions in a more physically consistent manner. It should be kept in mind that this analysis is based on the evaluation of the modelled ice sheet extents only, as geological evidence on the former ice sheet thickness is still scarce. Nevertheless, it can be shown that a realistic ice sheet geometry during the LGM is consistent with a regional decrease in air temperature of 7 to 12 °C and an increase in precipitation of 400 to 1500 mm/year along the western sectors of the PIS.</p>

While there are numerous hypotheses concerning glacial–interglacial environmental and climatic regime shifts in the Arctic Ocean, a holistic view on the Northern Hemisphere's late Quaternary ice-sheet extent and their impact on ocean and sea-ice dynamics remains to be established. Here we aim to provide a step in this direction by presenting an overview of Arctic Ocean glacial history, based on the present state-of-the-art knowledge gained from field work and chronological studies, and with a specific focus on ice-sheet extent and environmental conditions during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). The maximum Quaternary extension of ice sheets is discussed and compared to LGM. We bring together recent results from the circum-Arctic continental margins and the deep central basin; extent of ice sheets and ice streams bordering the Arctic Ocean as well as evidence for ice shelves extending into the central deep basin. Discrepancies between new results and published LGM ice-sheet reconstructions in the high Arctic are highlighted and outstanding questions are identified. Finally, we address the ability to simulate the Arctic Ocean ice sheet complexes and their dynamics, including ice streams and ice shelves, using presently available ice-sheet models. Our review shows that while we are able to firmly reject some of the earlier hypotheses formulated to describe Arctic Ocean glacial conditions, we still lack information from key areas to compile the holistic Arctic Ocean glacial history.

Abstract. The Earth's ice sheets, including the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS), are critical tipping points in the climate system. In recent years, the potential future collapse has garnered increased attention due to its cascading effects, which could significantly alter global climate patterns and cause large-scale, long-lasting, and potentially irreversible changes within human timescales. This study investigates the large-scale response of the polar Southern Hemisphere (pSH; comprising the Southern Ocean and Antarctica (60–90° S)) to the geometric reduction in ice sheets to a reconstructed Late Pliocene (LP) extent and imposing increased greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing in the Earth System. Using the PRISM4D reconstruction, where ice sheets such as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) were significantly diminished, we conducted multi-centennial simulations with the EC-Earth3 model at atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 280 and 400 ppmv. The simulation performed with LP ice sheet extent leads to a 9.5 °C rise in surface air temperature, approximately a 16 % reduction in sea ice concentration (SIC) over Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. These changes far exceed those driven by CO2 increase alone, which result in a 2.5 °C warming and a 9.3 % sea ice decline. Additionally, both experiments deduce there is a reversal in sea level pressure (SLP) polarity with respect to pre-industrial (PI) patterns. Higher-than-normal SLP is present over Antarctica, and lower-than-normal SLP is present in the mid-latitudes, indicative of a negative phase of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). This is supported by a weakening of the westerly jet, which in turn contributes to the formation of a fresh cap in the upper ocean, induced by the imposed climatic impacts of our sensitivity experiments. This overall freshening of the upper ocean increases stratification in the water column and prevents deep convection in the Southern Ocean, thus leading to the formation of the Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW), which is paramount for the ventilation of the global ocean. Overall, our findings suggest that, by increasing the atmospheric concentration of CO2, the AABW is suppressed at a multi-centennial timescale; however, by reducing the ice sheet extent, compensatory mechanisms, involving an extensive salinisation of the ocean interior, trigger partial recovery of this water mass. This emphasises the non-linearity of the climate system, since consequences of reducing the ice sheets induce an amplified warming and freshening in the near-surface, whereas they induce opposing mechanisms in the deep ocean that significantly alter the dynamics of water masses that feed the AABW. By isolating the climatic response to ice sheet extent reduction, whilst holding other parameters fixed, this study offers critical insights into the mechanisms driving atmospheric and oceanic variability around Antarctica and their broader implications for global climate dynamics. Here we provide a unique, targeted approach, specifically focusing on the direct impact of ice sheet retreat on regional climate.

The Last Glacial Maximum extent of the North American Ice Sheets is well constrained empirically but has proven to be challenging to simulate with coupled Climate‐Ice Sheet models. Coupled Climate‐Ice Sheet models are often too computationally expensive to sufficiently explore uncertainty in input parameters, and it is unlikely that values calibrated to reproduce modern ice sheets will reproduce the known extent of the ice at the Last Glacial Maximum. To address this, we run an ensemble with a coupled Climate‐Ice Sheet model (FAMOUS‐ice), simulating the final stages of growth of the last North American Ice Sheets' maximum extent. Using this large ensemble approach, we explore the influence of numerous uncertain ice sheet albedo, ice sheet dynamics, atmospheric, and oceanic parameters on the ice sheet extent. We find that ice sheet albedo parameters determine the majority of uncertainty when simulating the Last Glacial Maximum North American Ice Sheets. Importantly, different albedo parameters are needed to produce a good match to the Last Glacial Maximum North American Ice Sheets than have previously been used to model the contemporary Greenland Ice Sheet due to differences in cloud cover over ablation zones. Thus, calibrating coupled climate‐ice sheet models on one ice sheet may produce strong biases when the model is applied to a new domain.

Abstract. In this study we compare a recent reconstruction of the Weichselian Ice Sheet as simulated by the University of Maine ice sheet model (UMISM) to two reconstructions commonly used in glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) modelling: ICE-5G and ANU (Australian National University, also known as RSES). The UMISM reconstruction is carried out on a regional scale based on thermo-mechanical modelling, whereas ANU and ICE-5G are global models based on the sea level equation. The three models of the Weichselian Ice Sheet are compared directly in terms of ice volume, extent and thickness, as well as in terms of predicted glacial isostatic adjustment in Fennoscandia. The three reconstructions display significant differences. Whereas UMISM and ANU includes phases of pronounced advance and retreat prior to the last glacial maximum (LGM), the thickness and areal extent of the ICE-5G ice sheet is more or less constant up until the LGM. During the post-LGM deglaciation phase ANU and ICE-5G melt relatively uniformly over the entire ice sheet in contrast to UMISM, which melts preferentially from the edges, thus reflecting the fundamental difference in the reconstruction scheme. We find that all three reconstructions fit the present-day uplift rates over Fennoscandia equally well, albeit with different optimal earth model parameters. Given identical earth models, ICE-5G predicts the fastest present-day uplift rates, and ANU the slowest. Moreover, only for ANU can a unique best-fit model be determined. For UMISM and ICE-5G there is a range of earth models that can reproduce the present-day uplift rates equally well. This is understood from the higher present-day uplift rates predicted by ICE-5G and UMISM, which result in bifurcations in the best-fit upper- and lower-mantle viscosities. We study the areal distributions of present-day residual surface velocities in Fennoscandia and show that all three reconstructions generally over-predict velocities in southwestern Fennoscandia and that there are large differences in the fit to the observational data in Finland and northernmost Sweden and Norway. These difference may provide input to further enhancements of the ice sheet reconstructions.

During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 23 to 19 thousand years ago), the Patagonian Ice Sheet (PIS) expanded along the Andes between ~ 38 °S to 55 °S. Existing paleoclimatic and paleoglacial evidence, especially that derived from glacial landforms, seems to indicate that the timing of maximum ice sheet expansions in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres was not synchronous. Moreover, significant uncertainties still exist in the onset of regional deglaciation and its major drivers. In this context, a combination of ice sheet modelling, glacial geochronology and paleoclimate reconstructions can provide important insights into the former PIS geometry and its contribution to the sea level low during the LGM. It can also help us infer likely paleoclimate scenarios and climate models that capture regional climate responses to global change in the most realistic manner.Here we present an ensemble of numerical ice sheet simulations of the PIS at the LGM to constrain an envelope of probable atmospheric conditions derived from a range of model-based climate forcing products from the phases 3 and 4 of the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project (PMIP). The resulting ensemble is then used as a guideline to identify sectors of the PIS where a significant disagreement between the field evidence and modelling results is obtained, highlighting a strong dependence of the PIS geometry on the uncertainties in near-surface air temperature forcing. We find that all ensemble members consistently fail to reproduce the ice sheet extent towards the northern part of Patagonia within the explored model parameter space. At the same time, the modelled PIS expands beyond its southeastern reconstructed boundary. Our analysis of the ice sheet’s mass budget seems to indicate that these discrepancies between the modelled and reconstructed PIS extents arise from poorly resolved topographic features within the global climate models and the general lack of observational data on ice thickness distribution during the LGM. We conclude that INM-CM4-8 and MPI-ESM1-2-LR produce the most realistic climate forcing across Patagonia at the LGM. It should be kept in mind that this analysis is based only on the evaluation of modelled ice sheet extents against geological evidence, as observational data on the former ice sheet thickness are still lacking. Nevertheless, our analysis suggests that the quality of the regional model-based climate reconstructions is directly linked to the horizontal resolution that must be capable of resolving topographic features of the Andes and ideally of the PIS itself.

Three‐dimensional (3D) seismic datasets, 2D seismic reflection profiles and shallow cores provide insights into the geometry and composition of glacial features on the continental shelf, offshore eastern Scotland (58° N, 1–2° W). The relic features are related to the activity of the last British Ice Sheet (BIS) in the Outer Moray Firth. A landsystem assemblage consisting of four types of subglacial and ice marginal morphology is mapped at the seafloor. The assemblage comprises: (i) large seabed banks (interpreted as end moraines), coeval with the Bosies Bank moraine; (ii) morainic ridges (hummocky, push and end moraine) formed beneath, and at the margins of the ice sheet; (iii) an incised valley (a subglacial meltwater channel), recording meltwater drainage beneath former ice sheets; and (iv) elongate ridges and grooves (subglacial bedforms) overprinted by transverse ridges (grounding line moraines). The bedforms suggest that fast‐flowing grounded ice advanced eastward of the previously proposed terminus of the offshore Late Weichselian BIS, increasing the size and extent of the ice sheet beyond traditional limits. Complex moraine formation at the margins of less active ice characterised subsequent retreat, with periodic stillstands and readvances. Observations are consistent with interpretations of a dynamic and oscillating ice margin during BIS deglaciation, and with an extensive ice sheet in the North Sea basin at the Last Glacial Maximum. Final ice margin retreat was rapid, manifested in stagnant ice topography, which aided preservation of the landsystem record. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Marine records of sediment oxygen isotope compositions show that the Earth's climate has gone through a succession of glacial and interglacial periods during the past million years. But the interpretation of the oxygen isotope records is complicated because both isotope storage in ice sheets and deep-water temperature affect the recorded isotopic composition. Separating these two effects would require long records of either sea level or deep-ocean temperature, which are currently not available. Here we use a coupled model of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets and ocean temperatures, forced to match an oxygen isotope record for the past million years compiled from 57 globally distributed sediment cores, to quantify both contributions simultaneously. We find that the ice-sheet contribution to the variability in oxygen isotope composition varied from ten per cent in the beginning of glacial periods to sixty per cent at glacial maxima, suggesting that strong ocean cooling preceded slow ice-sheet build-up. The model yields mutually consistent time series of continental mean surface temperatures between 40 and 80 degrees N, ice volume and global sea level. We find that during extreme glacial stages, air temperatures were 17 +/- 1.8 degrees C lower than present, with a 120 +/- 10 m sea level equivalent of continental ice present.

Abstract. Studying the retreat of the Patagonian Ice Sheet (PIS) during the last deglaciation represents an important opportunity to understand how ice sheets outside the polar regions have responded to deglacial changes in temperature and large-scale atmospheric circulation. At the northernmost extension of the PIS during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the Chilean Lake District (CLD) was influenced by the southern westerly winds (SWW), which strongly modulated the hydrologic and heat budgets of the region. Despite progress in constraining the nature and timing of deglacial ice retreat across this area, considerable uncertainty in the glacial history still exists due to a lack of geologic constraints on past ice margin change. Where the glacial chronology is lacking, ice sheet models can provide important insight into our understanding of the characteristics and drivers of deglacial ice retreat. Here we apply the Ice Sheet and Sea-level System Model (ISSM) to simulate the LGM and last deglacial ice history of the PIS across the CLD at high spatial resolution (450 m). We present a transient simulation of ice margin change across the last deglaciation using climate inputs from the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Climate System Model (CCSM3) Trace-21ka experiment. At the LGM, the simulated ice extent across the CLD agrees well with the most comprehensive reconstruction of PIS ice history (PATICE). Coincident with deglacial warming, ice retreat ensues after 19 ka, with large-scale ice retreat occurring across the CLD between 18 and 16.5 ka. By 17 ka, the northern portion of the CLD becomes ice free, and by 15 ka, ice only persists at high elevations as mountain glaciers and small ice caps. Our simulated ice history agrees well with PATICE for early deglacial ice retreat but diverges at and after 15 ka, where the geologic reconstruction suggests the persistence of an ice cap across the southern CLD until 10 ka. However, given the high uncertainty in the geologic reconstruction of the PIS across the CLD during the later deglaciation, this work emphasizes a need for improved geologic constraints on past ice margin change. While deglacial warming drove the ice retreat across this region, sensitivity tests reveal that modest variations in wintertime precipitation (∼10 %) can modulate the pacing of ice retreat by up to 2 ka, which has implications when comparing simulated outputs of ice margin change to geologic reconstructions. While we find that TraCE-21ka simulates large-scale changes in the SWW across the CLD that are consistent with regional paleoclimate reconstructions, the magnitude of the simulated precipitation changes is smaller than what is found in proxy records. From our sensitivity analysis, we can deduce that larger anomalies in precipitation, as found in paleoclimate proxies, may have had a large impact on modulating the magnitude and timing of deglacial ice retreat. This fact highlights an additional need for better constraints on the deglacial change in strength, position, and extent of the SWW as it relates to understanding the drivers of deglacial PIS behavior.

The North Atlantic storminess of Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) fully coupled climate simulations is generally less intense than that of their preindustrial (PI) counterparts, despite having stronger baroclinicity. An explanation for this counterintuitive result is presented by comparing two simulations of the IPSL full climate model forced by Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project Phase 3 (PMIP3) LGM and PI conditions. Two additional numerical experiments using a simplified dry general circulation model forced by idealized topography and a relaxation in temperature provide guidance for the dynamical interpretation. The forced experiment with idealized Rockies and an idealized Laurentide Ice Sheet has a less intense North Atlantic storm-track activity than the forced experiment with idealized Rockies only, despite similar baroclinicity. Both the climate and idealized runs satisfy or support the following statements. The reduced storm-track intensity can be explained by a reduced baroclinic conversion, which itself comes from a loss in eddy efficiency to tap the available potential energy as shown by energetic budgets. The eddy heat fluxes are northeastward oriented in the western Atlantic in LGM and are less well aligned with the mean temperature gradient than in PI. The southern slope of the Laurentide Ice Sheet topography forces the eddy geopotential isolines to be zonally oriented at low levels in its proximity. This distorts the tubes of constant eddy geopotential in such a way that they tilt northwestward with height during baroclinic growth in LGM while they are more optimally westward tilted in PI.

ABSTRACTThe full history of ice sheet and climate interactions is recorded in the vertical profiles of geochemical tracers in polar ice sheets. Numerical simulations of these archives promise great advances both in the interpretation of these reconstructions and the validation of the models themselves. However, fundamental mathematical shortcomings of existing models subject tracers to spurious diffusion, thwarting straightforward solutions. Here, I propose a new vertical discretization for ice-sheet models that eliminates numerical diffusion entirely. Vertical motion through the model mesh is avoided by mimicking the real-world flow of ice as a thinning of underlying layers. A new layer is added to the surface at equidistant time intervals, isochronally, thus identifying each layer uniquely by its time of deposition and age. This new approach is implemented for a two-dimensional section through the summit of the Greenland ice sheet. The ability to directly compare simulations of vertical ice cores with reconstructed data is used to find optimal model parameters from a large ensemble of simulations. It is shown that because this tuning method uses information from all times included in the ice core, it constrains ice-sheet sensitivity more robustly than a realistic reproduction of the modern ice-sheet surface.

<p>The Antarctic Ice Sheet is the largest and most uncertain potential contributor to future sea level rise. Understanding involved feedback mechanisms require physically-based models. Confidence in future projections can be improved by models that can reproduce past ice sheet changes, in particular over the last deglaciation. The complex interaction between ice, bedrock and sea level play<span>s</span> an important role in ice sheet instability with a large variety of characteristic response time scales dependent on the heterogeneous Earth structure underneath Antarctica<span> and the ice sheet dynamics</span>.</p><p>We have coupled the VIscoelastic Lithosphere and MAntle model (VILMA) to the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM v2.0, www.pism.io) and ran simulations over the last two glacial cycles. In this framework, VILMA considers both viscoelastic deformations of the solid Earth by considering a three-dimensional rheology and <span>a </span>gravitationally self-consistent mass redistribution in the ocean by solving for the sea-level equation. PISM solves for the stress balance for a changing bed topography, which is updated in 100 years coupling intervals and which can directly affect ice sheet flow and grounding line dynamics.</p><p>Here, we show first results of coupled PISM-VILMA simulation<span>s</span> scored against a database of geological constraints including <span>sea level index points. We discuss</span> sensitivities of model parameters and climatic forcing in preparation for a larger parameter ensemble study. This project is part of the German Climate Modeling Initiative PalMod.</p><p> </p>

The Russian component of an Arctic Ice Sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum

Abstract. Providing reliable projections of the ice sheet contribution to future sea-level rise has become one of the main challenges of the ice sheet modelling community. To increase confidence in future projections, a good knowledge of the present-day state of ice flow dynamics, which is critically dependent on basal conditions, is strongly needed. The main difficulty is tied to the scarcity of observations at the ice–bed interface at the scale of the whole ice sheet, resulting in poorly constrained parameterisations in ice sheet models. To circumvent this drawback, inverse modelling approaches can be developed to infer initial conditions for ice sheet models that best reproduce available data. Most often such approaches allow for a good representation of the mean present-day state of the ice sheet but are accompanied with unphysical trends. Here, we present an initialisation method for the Greenland ice sheet using the thermo-mechanical hybrid GRISLI (GRenoble Ice Shelf and Land Ice) ice sheet model. Our approach is based on the adjustment of the basal drag coefficient that relates the sliding velocities at the ice–bed interface to basal shear stress in unfrozen bed areas. This method relies on an iterative process in which the basal drag is periodically adjusted in such a way that the simulated ice thickness matches the observed one. The quality of the method is assessed by computing the root mean square errors in ice thickness changes. Because the method is based on an adjustment of the sliding velocities only, the results are discussed in terms of varying ice flow enhancement factors that control the deformation rates. We show that this factor has a strong impact on the minimisation of ice thickness errors and has to be chosen as a function of the internal thermal state of the ice sheet (e.g. a low enhancement factor for a warm ice sheet). While the method performance slightly increases with the duration of the minimisation procedure, an ice thickness root mean square error (RMSE) of 50.3 m is obtained in only 1320 model years. This highlights a rapid convergence and demonstrates that the method can be used for computationally expensive ice sheet models.