Shelf ice - ocean dynamics and their interaction in the vicinity of ice rumples: A coupled 3D-model and application to selected Antarctic regions

通过近十年来南极半岛拉森冰架的崩塌，人们认识到冰架对气候变化的敏感性。冰架的稳定性取决于海湾的存在，并在很大程度上受到冰上升和冰褶皱作为钉扎点的影响。由于其较小的空间范围，冰褶比冰上升对气候变化的反应更敏感。这项研究将阐明在气候变化影响南极冰架的背景下冰褶皱的作用。表面积累的增加可能会导致冰架变厚，从而使冰架的状况更加稳定，而海洋变暖和表面温度上升可能会导致冰架变薄。此外，海平面上升可能会导致冰架底部和基岩之间接触条件的改变，从而导致冰架完全崩解。本项目致力于研究这四个过程的综合影响。我们的全面调查将包括冰褶附近的所有组成部分：冰架，海洋和接地冰部分。我们将改进和耦合三个现有的数值模式，分别为地面冰体，冰架和海洋。由此产生的模型包将适用于威德尔或罗斯海部门在不同的合理气候情景下的选定区域。将与以前的非耦合模型的结果进行比较。

By the Larsen Ice Shelf collapse at the Antarctic Peninsula during the last decade, it is well-known that ice shelves react sensitively to climate change. The stability of ice shelves depends on the existence of embayments and is largely influenced by ice rises and ice rumples acting as pinning points. Due to their smaller spatial extent, ice rumples react more sensitively to climate change than ice rises. This study will elucidate the role of ice rumples in the context of climate change impacts on Antarctic ice shelves. An increased surface accumulation will probably lead to thickening and thus more stable conditions of the ice shelves, while ocean warming and increasing surface temperatures will presumably lead to thinning ice shelves. In addition, sea-level rise can cause a total disintegration as a result of changed conditions at the contact between ice-shelf base and bedrock. This project strives to investigate the combined effects of these four processes. Our comprehensive investigation will include all components in the vicinity of an ice rumple: the ice shelf, the ocean and the grounded ice portion. We will improve and couple three existing numerical models for grounded ice bodies, ice shelves, and ocean, respectively. The resulting model package will be applied to selected regions of the Weddell or Ross Sea sector under different plausible climate scenarios. A comparison to results of previous uncoupled models will be carried out.