Surface mass balance downscaling through elevation classes in an Earth system model: application to the Greenland ice sheet

Sellevold, Raymond; van Kampenhout, Leonardus; Lenaerts, Jan T. M.; Noël, Brice; Lipscomb, William H.; Vizcaino, Miren

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-3193-2019

Articles | Volume 13, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-3193-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-3193-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 12

Research article

|

04 Dec 2019

Research article |

| 04 Dec 2019

Surface mass balance downscaling through elevation classes in an Earth system model: application to the Greenland ice sheet

Raymond Sellevold, Leonardus van Kampenhout, Jan T. M. Lenaerts, Brice Noël, William H. Lipscomb, and Miren Vizcaino

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-3193-2019-supplement

Data sets

Data and scripts for Surface mass balance downscaling through elevation classes in an Earth System Model: application to the Greenland ice sheet R. Sellevold https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3479410

Short summary

We evaluate a downscaling method to calculate ice sheet surface mass balance with global climate models, despite their coarse resolution. We compare it with high-resolution climate modeling. Despite absence of fine-scale simulation of individual energy and mass contributors, the method provides realistic vertical SMB gradients that can be used in forcing of ice sheet models, e.g., for sea level projections. Also, the climate model simulation is improved with the method implemented interactively.