Calibration of basal melt on past ice discharge lowers projections of Antarctica’s sea level contribution

Abstract

Abstract. Antarctic mass loss is the largest contributor to uncertainties in sea level projections on centennial timescales. In this study the contribution of Antarctica’s ice discharge to future sea level changes is computed with ocean thermal forcing from 14 earth system models and linear response functions from 16 ice sheet models for three greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Different than in previous studies, basal melt was calibrated on observed Antarctic ice discharge rather than on basal melt itself with an iterative approach. For each model combination, a linear and quadratic melt dependency were calibrated both regionally (in five Antarctic sectors) and at the continental scale. Projections using all model combinations show that the variation in basal melt computation methods affect the projected sea level more than the scenario variations (SSP1-2.6 to SSP5-8.5). After calibration, a high number of model pairs still underestimated ice discharge in hindcasts over 1979–2017. Therefore top 10 % best-performing model combinations were selected for each method. A comparison between these model selections shows that the quadratic melt parameterisation with Antarctic-wide calibration performs best in reproducing past ice discharge. We conclude that calibration of basal melt on past ice discharge combined with model selection makes projections of Antarctic ice discharge (more) consistent with observations over the past four decades. Moreover, calibration of basal melt on past ice discharge results in lower basal melt sensitivities and thus lower projections of Antarctica’s sea level contribution than estimates of previous multi-model studies.