Datasets and protocols for including anomalous freshwater from melting ice sheets in climate simulations
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gmd-18-8333-2025.pdf
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5.24 MB
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Checksum (MD5)
1a732b6c4b5a19edeba51ad6db2b197d
Author(s)
Gavin A. Schmidt
Kenneth D. Mankoff
Jonathan L. Bamber
Clara Burgard
Dustin Carroll
David M. Chandler
Violaine Coulon
Benjamin J. Davison
Matthew H. England
Paul R. Holland
Date Issued
November 7, 2025
Journal
Geoscientific Model Development
Publisher
Copernicus GmbH
Citation
Schmidt, G. A., Mankoff, K. D., Bamber, J. L., Burgard, C., Carroll, D., Chandler, D. M., Coulon, V., Davison, B. J., England, M. H., Holland, P. R., Jourdain, N. C., Li, Q., Marson, J. M., Mathiot, P., McMahon, C. R., Moon, T. A., Mottram, R., Nowicki, S., Olivé Abelló, A., Pauling, A. G., Rackow, T., and Ringeisen, D.: Datasets and protocols for including anomalous freshwater from melting ice sheets in climate simulations, Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 8333–8361.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Anomalous freshwater fluxes from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and ice shelves are impacting the surrounding oceans, and we need to be able to account for these effects in climate model simulations over the historical period and in future projections. In previous phases of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), models mostly either assumed that the ice sheets were in mass balance, or that discharge from the ice sheets was constant, but in neither case was the observed increasing discharge over the historical period properly represented. In this paper, we present data products of absolute and anomalous freshwater mass fluxes from both major ice sheets, and recommendations for their use in historical simulations. These fluxes can be implemented in climate simulations as a forcing for models that do not (yet) include interactive ice sheets, or used to evaluate models that do. We also make recommendations for how climatological and anomalous fluxes can be implemented in climate models that may have different approaches to interactions with the ice sheets. These forcings are available for CMIP7 simulations and should lead to more robust and coherent simulation of sea surface temperature, sea ice and regional sea level trends in the recent historical period and, as these data are extended, improve the credibility of projections.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-8333-2025
