Is thermal steady-state a good assumption?

ISSM paper investigates the thermal steady-state assumption on basal friction inversion and short-term simulations

Abstract:
Observations show that the Greenland ice sheet has been losing mass at an increasing rate over the past few decades, which makes it a major contributor to sea-level rise. Here we use a three- dimensional higher-order ice-flow model, adaptive mesh refinement and inverse methods to accurately reproduce the present-day ice flow of the Greenland ice sheet. We investigate the effect of the ice thermal regime on (1) basal sliding inversion and (2) projections over the next 100 years. We show that steady-state temperatures based on present-day conditions allow a reasonable representation of the thermal regime and that both basal conditions and century-scale projections are weakly sensitive to small changes in the initial temperature field, compared with changes in atmospheric conditions or basal sliding. We conclude that although more englacial temperature measurements should be acquired to validate the models, and a better estimation of geothermal heat flux is needed, it is reasonable to use steady-state temperature profiles for short-term projections, as external forcings remain the main drivers of the changes occurring in Greenland.

Reference
Dependence of century-scale projections of the Greenland icesheet on its thermal regime, Seroussi H., Morlighem M., Rignot E., Khazendar A., Larour E. and Mouginot J., J. Glaciol., 59(218), 2013, , 1024-1034

Volume evolution under different scenarios
Simulated ice mass change of the Greenland ice sheet (in Gt and %) for 100 year simulations with different scenarios: constant climate with steady-state temperature (green), EXP1 temperature (violet), EXP2 temperature (red), EXP3 temperature (dark blue), AR4 atmospheric conditions (yellow) and increased basal lubrication (gray)