Preprints
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2022-103
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2022-103
31 May 2022
 | 31 May 2022
Status: a revised version of this preprint was accepted for the journal TC and is expected to appear here in due course.

Compensating errors in inversions for subglacial bed roughness: same steady state, different dynamic response

Constantijn J. Berends, Roderik S. W. van de Wal, Tim van den Akker, and William H. Lipscomb

Abstract. Subglacial bed roughness is one of the main factors controlling the rate of future Antarctic ice-sheet retreat, and also one of the most uncertain. A common technique to constrain the bed roughness using ice-sheet models is basal inversion, tuning the roughness to reproduce the observed present-day ice-sheet geometry and/or surface velocity. However, many other factors affecting ice-sheet evolution, such as the englacial temperature and viscosity, the surface and basal mass balance, and the subglacial topography, also contain substantial uncertainties. Using a basal inversion technique intrinsically causes any errors in these other quantities, to lead to compensating errors in the inverted bed roughness. Using a set of idealised-geometry experiments, we quantify these compensating errors and investigate their effect on the dynamic response of the ice-sheet to a prescribed forcing. We find that relatively small errors in ice viscosity and subglacial topography require substantial compensating errors in the bed roughness in order to produce the same steady-state ice sheet, obscuring the realistic spatial variability in the bed roughness. When subjected to a retreat-inducing forcing, we find that these different parameter combinations, which per definition of the inversion procedure result in the same steady-state geometry, lead to a rate of ice volume loss that can differ by as much as a factor of two. This implies that ice-sheet models that use basal inversion to initialise their model state can still display a substantial model bias despite having an initial state which is close to the observations.

Constantijn J. Berends et al.

Status: closed

Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor | : Report abuse
  • RC1: 'Comment on tc-2022-103', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Jun 2022
    • AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Tijn Berends, 26 Aug 2022
  • RC2: 'Comment on tc-2022-103', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Jul 2022
    • AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Tijn Berends, 26 Aug 2022

Status: closed

Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor | : Report abuse
  • RC1: 'Comment on tc-2022-103', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Jun 2022
    • AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Tijn Berends, 26 Aug 2022
  • RC2: 'Comment on tc-2022-103', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Jul 2022
    • AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Tijn Berends, 26 Aug 2022

Constantijn J. Berends et al.

Constantijn J. Berends et al.

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Short summary
The rate at which the Antarctic ice sheet will melt because of man-made climate change is uncertain. Part of this uncertainty stems from processes occurring beneath the ice, such as the way the ice slides over the underlying bedrock. "Inversion methods" attempt to use observations of the ice-sheet surface to calculate how these sliding processes work. We show that such methods cannot fully solve this problem, so that a substantial uncertainty still remains in projections of sea-level rise.