A simple equation for the melt elevation feedback of ice sheets

Levermann, Anders; Winkelmann, Ricarda

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-1799-2016

Articles | Volume 10, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-1799-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-1799-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 4

Research article

|

18 Aug 2016

Research article |

| 18 Aug 2016

A simple equation for the melt elevation feedback of ice sheets

Anders Levermann and Ricarda Winkelmann

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Final revised paper (published on 18 Aug 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 12 Apr 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

SC1: 'Comparison to Oerlemans, 1981', Jeremy Fyke, 12 Apr 2016
- AC1: 'Reply to Jeremy Fyke', Anders Levermann, 12 Apr 2016
RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 02 May 2016
- RC2: 'Attention: Text is missing in the first two specific comments', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 May 2016
  - RC3: 'Review with missing text included', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 May 2016
    - SC2: 'Initial response to Reviewer #1', Anders Levermann, 04 May 2016
    - SC3: 'Initial response to Reviewer #1', Anders Levermann, 04 May 2016
RC4: 'Review of Levermann and Winkelmann', Anonymous Referee #2, 07 May 2016
- SC4: 'Thanks to the reviewer', Anders Levermann, 08 May 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Anders Levermann on behalf of the Authors (15 Jul 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (29 Jul 2016) by Xavier Fettweis

Short summary

In recent decades, the Greenland Ice Sheet has been losing mass and has thereby contributed to global sea-level rise. Here we derive the basic equations for the melt elevation feedback that can lead to self-amplifying melt of the Greenland Ice Sheet and ice sheets in general. The theory unifies the results of complex models when the feedback dominates the dynamics and it allows us to estimate the melt time of ice sheets from data in cases where ice dynamic loss can be neglected.