Results from the Ice Thickness Models Intercomparison eXperiment Phase 2 (ITMIX2) - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Frontiers in Earth Science Année : 2021

Results from the Ice Thickness Models Intercomparison eXperiment Phase 2 (ITMIX2)

Daniel Farinotti
  • Fonction : Auteur
  • PersonId : 1113856
Douglas J Brinkerhoff
  • Fonction : Auteur
Johannes J Fürst
  • Fonction : Auteur
Prateek Gantayat
  • Fonction : Auteur
Matthias Huss
Paul W Leclercq
  • Fonction : Auteur
Hansruedi Maurer
  • Fonction : Auteur
Mathieu Morlighem
Ankur Pandit
  • Fonction : Auteur
Antoine Rabatel
Raaj Ramsankaran
  • Fonction : Auteur
Thomas J Reerink
Ellen Robo
  • Fonction : Auteur
Emmanuel Rouges
  • Fonction : Auteur
Erik Tamre
  • Fonction : Auteur
Ward J J van Pelt
  • Fonction : Auteur
Mauro A Werder
  • Fonction : Auteur
Mohod Farooq Azam
  • Fonction : Auteur
Huilin Li
  • Fonction : Auteur
Liss M Andreassen
  • Fonction : Auteur
Mohod Farooq Azam
  • Fonction : Auteur

Résumé

Knowing the ice thickness distribution of a glacier is of fundamental importance for a number of applications, ranging from the planning of glaciological fieldwork to the assessments of future sea-level change. Across spatial scales, however, this knowledge is limited by the paucity and discrete character of available thickness observations. To obtain a spatially coherent distribution of the glacier ice thickness, interpolation or numerical models have to be used. Whilst the first phase of the Ice Thickness Models Intercomparison eXperiment (ITMIX) focused on approaches that estimate such spatial information from characteristics of the glacier surface alone, ITMIX2 sought insights for the capability of the models to extract information from a limited number of thickness observations. The analyses were designed around 23 test cases comprising both real-world and synthetic glaciers, with each test case comprising a set of 16 different experiments mimicking possible scenarios of data availability. A total of 13 models participated in the experiments. The results show that the inter-model variability in the calculated local thickness is high, and that for unmeasured locations, deviations of 16% of the mean glacier thickness are typical (median estimate, three-quarters of the deviations within 37% of the mean glacier thickness). This notwithstanding, limited sets of ice thickness observations are shown to be effective in constraining the mean glacier thickness, demonstrating the value of even partial surveys. Whilst the results are only weakly affected by the spatial distribution of the observations, surveys that preferentially sample the lowest glacier elevations are found to cause a systematic underestimation of the thickness in several models. Conversely, a preferential sampling of the thickest glacier parts proves effective in reducing the deviations. The response to the availability of ice thickness observations is characteristic to each approach and varies across models. On average across models, the deviation between modeled and observed thickness increase by 8.5% of the mean ice thickness every time the distance to the closest observation increases by a factor of 10. No single best model emerges from the analyses, confirming the added value of using model ensembles.

Domaines

Glaciologie
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
Farinotti et al. - 2021 - Results from the Ice Thickness Models Intercompari.pdf (2.21 Mo) Télécharger le fichier
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)

Dates et versions

hal-03382403 , version 1 (18-10-2021)

Identifiants

Citer

Daniel Farinotti, Douglas J Brinkerhoff, Johannes J Fürst, Prateek Gantayat, Fabien Gillet-Chaulet, et al.. Results from the Ice Thickness Models Intercomparison eXperiment Phase 2 (ITMIX2). Frontiers in Earth Science, 2021, 8, ⟨10.3389/feart.2020.571923⟩. ⟨hal-03382403⟩
21 Consultations
31 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More