Large and irreversible future decline of the Greenland ice sheet

Gregory, Jonathan M.; George, Steven E.; Smith, Robin S.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-4299-2020

Articles | Volume 14, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-4299-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-4299-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 12

Research article

|

01 Dec 2020

Research article |

| 01 Dec 2020

Large and irreversible future decline of the Greenland ice sheet

Jonathan M. Gregory, Steven E. George, and Robin S. Smith

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Final revised paper (published on 01 Dec 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 16 Apr 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of "Large and irreversible future decline of the Greenland ice-sheet"', Anonymous Referee #1, 18 Jul 2020
- AC1: 'response to reviewers', Jonathan M. Gregory, 18 Sep 2020
RC2: 'Review of Gregory et al.', Alexander Robinson, 31 Jul 2020
- AC1: 'response to reviewers', Jonathan M. Gregory, 18 Sep 2020
RC3: 'Review', Xavier Fettweis, 09 Aug 2020
- AC1: 'response to reviewers', Jonathan M. Gregory, 18 Sep 2020
AC1: 'response to reviewers', Jonathan M. Gregory, 18 Sep 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (04 Oct 2020) by Jan De Rydt

AR by Jonathan M. Gregory on behalf of the Authors (05 Oct 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (22 Oct 2020) by Jan De Rydt

AR by Jonathan M. Gregory on behalf of the Authors (23 Oct 2020)

Short summary

Melting of the Greenland ice sheet as a consequence of global warming could raise global-mean sea level by up to 7 m. We have studied this using a newly developed computer model. With recent climate maintained, sea level would rise by 0.5–2.5 m over many millennia due to Greenland ice loss: the warmer the climate, the greater the sea level rise. Beyond about 3.5 m it would become partially irreversible. In order to avoid this outcome, anthropogenic climate change must be reversed soon enough.