A Reconciled Estimate of Glacier Contributions to Sea Level Rise: 2003 to 2009
Melting Away
We assume the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets are the main drivers of global sea-level rise, but how large is the contribution from other sources of glacial ice? Gardner et al. (p. 852) synthesize data from glacialogical inventories to find that glaciers in the Arctic, Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes, and high-mountain Asia contribute approximately as much melt water as the ice sheets themselves: 260 billion tons per year between 2003 and 2009, accounting for about 30% of the observed sea-level rise during that period.
Abstract
Glaciers distinct from the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets are losing large amounts of water to the world’s oceans. However, estimates of their contribution to sea level rise disagree. We provide a consensus estimate by standardizing existing, and creating new, mass-budget estimates from satellite gravimetry and altimetry and from local glaciological records. In many regions, local measurements are more negative than satellite-based estimates. All regions lost mass during 2003–2009, with the largest losses from Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes, and high-mountain Asia, but there was little loss from glaciers in Antarctica. Over this period, the global mass budget was –259 ± 28 gigatons per year, equivalent to the combined loss from both ice sheets and accounting for 29 ± 13% of the observed sea level rise.
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References and Notes
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Published In
Science
Volume 340 | Issue 6134
17 May 2013
17 May 2013
Copyright
Copyright © 2013, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 26 December 2012
Accepted: 7 March 2013
Published in print: 17 May 2013
Acknowledgments
We thank K. Matsuo, M. Huss, T. Jacob, A. Kääb, S. Luthcke, A. Willsman, M. Willis, and I. Sasgen for updated or early access to regional estimates of glacier mass change; M. Flanner, T. Jacob, and S. Swenson for helping with analysis of the hydrologic models; A. Bliss, N. Mölg, C. Nuth, P. Rastner, M. Willis, and G. Wolken for providing regional areas of ocean-terminating glacier basins; J. Lenaerts and J. van Angelen for providing RACMO2 output for Greenland and Antarctica; J. Box and C. Chen for making available Greenland Ice Sheet snowline estimates; G. A, R. Riva, and P. Stocchi for providing glacial isostatic adjustment models; and C. Starr and the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio for help with Fig. 1. This work was supported by funding to A.S.G. and M.J.S. from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, G.M. from NASA award NNX09AE52G, B.W. from a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IOF-301260), E.B. from the TOSCA program of the French Space Agency (CNES), R.H. from NASA grants NNX11AF41G and NNX11A023G and NSF grant ANT-1043649, G.K. from Austrian Science Fund (FWF) grant P25362-N26, T.B. from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, BO 3199/2-1), and F.P. from European Space Agency project Glaciers_cci (4000101778/10/I-AM).
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