MIS-11 duration key to disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet

Alexander Robinson (), Jorge Alvarez-Solas, Reinhard Calov, Andrey Ganopolski and Marisa Montoya
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Alexander Robinson: Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Jorge Alvarez-Solas: Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Reinhard Calov: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Andrey Ganopolski: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Marisa Montoya: Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Palaeo data suggest that Greenland must have been largely ice free during Marine Isotope Stage 11 (MIS-11). However, regional summer insolation anomalies were modest during this time compared to MIS-5e, when the Greenland ice sheet likely lost less volume. Thus it remains unclear how such conditions led to an almost complete disappearance of the ice sheet. Here we use transient climate–ice sheet simulations to simultaneously constrain estimates of regional temperature anomalies and Greenland’s contribution to the MIS-11 sea-level highstand. We find that Greenland contributed 6.1 m (3.9–7.0 m, 95% credible interval) to sea level, ∼7 kyr after the peak in regional summer temperature anomalies of 2.8 °C (2.1–3.4 °C). The moderate warming produced a mean rate of mass loss in sea-level equivalent of only around 0.4 m per kyr, which means the long duration of MIS-11 interglacial conditions around Greenland was a necessary condition for the ice sheet to disappear almost completely.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms16008

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