Projections of precipitation and temperatures in Greenland and the impact of spatially uniform anomalies on the evolution of the ice sheet

Abstract

Simulations of the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) at millennial timescales and beyond often assume spatially and temporally uniform temperature anomalies and precipitation sensitivities over these timescales or rely on simple parameterisation schemes for the precipitation rates. However, there is no a priori reason to expect spatially and temporally uniform sensitivities across the whole GrIS. Precipitation is frequently modelled to increase with the standard thermodynamic scaling of ∼7 % K−1 derived from the Clausius–Clapeyron relation and often based on older model generations. Here, we update the commonly used parameters for long-term modelling of the GrIS, based on the output of the latest generation of coupled Earth system models (CMIP6), using the historical time period and four different future emission scenarios. We show that the precipitation sensitivities in Greenland have a strong spatial dependence, with values ranging from −3 % K−1 in southern Greenland to 13 % K−1 in northeastern Greenland relative to the local annual mean near-surface temperature in the CMIP6 ensemble mean. Additionally, we show that the annual mean temperatures in Greenland increase between 1.29 and 1.53 times faster than the global mean temperature (GMT), with northern Greenland warming up to 2 times faster than southern Greenland in all emission scenarios. However, we also show that there is a considerable spread in the model responses that can, at least partially, be attributed to differences in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) response across models. Finally, using the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM), we show that assuming uniform temperature and precipitation anomalies and sensitivities leads to overestimation of near-surface temperatures and underestimation of precipitation in key regions of the GrIS, such as southwestern Greenland. This, in turn, can result in substantial overestimation of ice loss in the long-term evolution of the GrIS.