Observed ice-sheet losses track the upper range of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report sea-level predictions, recently driven by ice dynamics in Antarctica and surface melting in Greenland. Ice-sheet models must account for short-term variability in the atmosphere, oceans and climate to accurately predict sea-level rise.
Access options
Subscribe to Journal
Get full journal access for 1 year
$209.00
only $17.42 per issue
All prices are NET prices.
VAT will be added later in the checkout.
Rent or Buy article
Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.
from$8.99
All prices are NET prices.
References
- 1.
The IMBIE Team. Nature 558, 219–222 (2018).
- 2.
The IMBIE Team. Nature 579, 233–239 (2020).
- 3.
IPCC Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).
- 4.
Vitousek, S. et al. Sci. Rep. 7, 1399 (2017).
- 5.
Golledge, N. R. et al. Nature 566, 65–72 (2019).
- 6.
Nowicki, S. M. J. et al. Geosci. Model Dev. 9, 4521–4545 (2016).
- 7.
Pattyn, F. et al. Nat. Clim. Change 8, 1053–1061 (2018).
- 8.
Kulp, S. A. & Strauss, B. H. Nat. Commun. 10, 4844 (2019).
- 9.
Hinkel, J. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111, 3292–3297 (2014).
- 10.
Garner, A. J. et al. Earth’s Future 6, 1603–1615 (2018).
- 11.
Bevis, M. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 116, 1934–1939 (2019).
- 12.
Nghiem, S. V. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 39, L20502 (2012).
- 13.
Hofer, S., Tedstone, A. J., Fettweis, X. & Bamber, J. L. Nat. Clim. Change 9, 523–528 (2019).
- 14.
Ritz, C. et al. Nature 528, 115–118 (2015).
- 15.
Edwards, T. L. et al. Nature 566, 58–64 (2019).
Acknowledgements
This work is an outcome of the Ice-sheet Mass Balance Inter-Comparison Exercise (IMBIE) supported by the ESA Climate Change Initiative and the NASA Cryosphere Program. T.S. was funded by the NERC Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling through a Natural Environment Research Council (cpom300001) grant, and A.E.H. was funded by a NERC Fellowship (NE/R012407/1). R.M. acknowledges the support of the ESA CCI+ for Greenland ice-sheet under ESA-ESRIN contract number 4000104815/11/I-NB and the Danish State through the National Centre for Climate Research (NCKF). We thank the European Space Agency, National Aeronautics Space Administration and the German Aerospace Centre for provision of satellite data, without which this study would not have been possible. We also thank A. Shepherd for leading IMBIE, which produced the reconciled observations of ice-sheet mass change, and for useful discussions during the course of this study. The satellite data used here are freely available at http://imbie.org/data-downloads/, and IPCC sea-level rise projections can be downloaded from http://www.climatechange2013.org/report/full-report.
Author information
Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Fig. 1.
Source data
Source Data Fig. 1
Statistical source data.
Source Data Fig. 2
Statistical source data.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Slater, T., Hogg, A.E. & Mottram, R. Ice-sheet losses track high-end sea-level rise projections. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0893-y
Published: