Articles | Volume 16, issue 12
The Cryosphere, 16, 4931–4975, 2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-4931-2022
The Cryosphere, 16, 4931–4975, 2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-4931-2022
Research article
14 Dec 2022
Research article | 14 Dec 2022

An assessment of basal melt parameterisations for Antarctic ice shelves

Clara Burgard et al.

Data sets

Dataset and scripts related to the paper Clara Burgard, Nicolas C. Jourdain, Ronja Reese, Adrian Jenkins, and Pierre Mathiot https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7308352

Model code and software

Multimelt package Clara Burgard https://pypi.org/project/multimelt/

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Short summary
The ocean-induced melt at the base of the floating ice shelves around Antarctica is one of the largest uncertainty factors in the Antarctic contribution to future sea-level rise. We assess the performance of several existing parameterisations in simulating basal melt rates on a circum-Antarctic scale, using an ocean simulation resolving the cavities below the shelves as our reference. We find that the simple quadratic slope-independent and plume parameterisations yield the best compromise.