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Projekt Druckansicht

Assimilation geodätischer und geomorphologischer Beobachtungen in ein gekoppeltes Modell aus Eisschild und fester Erde zur Trennung heutiger und vergangener Entwicklungen des Antarktischen Eisschilds

Antragsteller Dr. Ingo Sasgen
Fachliche Zuordnung Physik des Erdkörpers
Förderung Förderung von 2013 bis 2018
Projektkennung Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 238011690
 
Erstellungsjahr 2019

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

The Antarctic ice sheet (AntIS) is a key element in the climate system, interacting with the atmosphere, ocean and solid Earth in various ways, often insufficiently understood. DIEM aimed at improving our understanding the current and past evolution of the AntIS with simulations of a coupled ice sheet / solid Earth model. Important aspect of the project was isolating and including geodetic data of the ongoing glacial-isostatic adjustment (GIA) and geological evidence of the ice sheet geometry. The final aim was to predict, in a dynamically consistent way, the ongoing GIA, which is a major uncertainty in deriving mass balances of the ice sheet from GRACE satellite gravimetry. The project succeed in realizing coupled ice sheet/ solid Earth simulations of the glacial evolution of the AntIS from the past 40,000 years using both 1D and 3D Earth structures of the lithosphere and mantle. The resulting GIA prediction for a 1D Earth structure was submitted to the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Excercise (IMBIE2). In parallel, with support of the European Space Agency (ESA), the GIA signal in Antarctica was successfully estimated based on multiple space geodetic data (GRACE, GPS, altimetry) and compared to the coupled ice sheet / solid Earth model simulations (1D and 3D). The study involved the generation of viscoelastic response kernels, particularly accounting for the weak solid Earth structure associated with the West Antarctic rift system. Within the associated PhD project, the same coupled ice / solid Earth model was used to predict the future changes of the West Antarctic ice sheet. It could be shown that the comparatively fast and strong uplift detected for the Amundsen Sea Embayment (up to 20 mm/year induced by GIA), leads to a fall in relative sea-level, which may delay or even stabilize the decay of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet triggered for warming ocean temperatures. An unexpected side topic emerged when exceptionally high uplift rates were also recovered for southeast Greenland. In research funded within DIEM, it could be shown that the strong uplift results from the ice retreat of the past 100 years, in the presence of a low viscosity structure. During 2017, a new method for assimilating geological records of sea-level change together with GPS uplift rates into a forward GIA model was developed. Finally, contributions were made to formulating an adjoint method for GIA modelling and the gravimetric recovery of sediment layers in the region of the Pine Island glacier. Particularly, the results from Khan et al. (2016) received a lot of attention by media outlets (http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/9/e1600931/tab-articleinfo).

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

 
 

Zusatzinformationen

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