Improving ice sheet model calibration using paleoclimate and modern data

DOI10.1214/16-AOAS979zbMATH Open1454.62437arXiv1510.01676MaRDI QIDQ512431FDOQ512431

Authors: Yong-Cai Geng, Sumit K. Garg 

Publication date: 24 February 2017

Published in: The Annals of Applied Statistics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Human-induced climate change may cause significant ice volume loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Projections of ice volume change from ice-sheet models and corresponding future sea-level rise have large uncertainties due to poorly constrained input parameters. In most future applications to date, model calibration has utilized only modern or recent (decadal) observations, leaving input parameters that control the long-term behavior of WAIS largely unconstrained. Many paleo-observations are in the form of localized time series, while modern observations are non-Gaussian spatial data; combining information across these types poses non-trivial statistical challenges. Here we introduce a computationally efficient calibration approach that utilizes both modern and paleo-observations to generate better-constrained ice volume projections. Using fast emulators built upon principal component analysis and a reduced dimension calibration model, we can efficiently handle high-dimensional and non-Gaussian data. We apply our calibration approach to the PSU3D-ICE model which can realistically simulate long-term behavior of WAIS. Our results show that using paleo observations in calibration significantly reduces parametric uncertainty, resulting in sharper projections about the future state of WAIS. One benefit of using paleo observations is found to be that unrealistic simulations with overshoots in past ice retreat and projected future regrowth are eliminated.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.01676

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zbMATH Keywords

dimension reductionGaussian processcomputer model calibrationpaleoclimateWest Antarctic Ice Sheet

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Computational methods for problems pertaining to statistics (62-08) Inference from spatial processes (62M30) Applications of statistics to environmental and related topics (62P12) Climate science and climate modeling (86A08)

Cited In (7)

• Bayesian inference of spatio-temporal changes of arctic sea ice
• Estimating spatial changes over time of arctic sea ice using hidden \(2 \times 2\) tables
• The potential of the ensemble Kalman filter to improve glacier modeling
• Quantifying spatio-temporal boundary condition uncertainty for the North American deglaciation
• A paleoclimate model of ice-albedo feedback forced by variations in Earth's orbit
• Ice model calibration using semicontinuous spatial data
• A fast particle-based approach for calibrating a 3-D model of the Antarctic ice sheet

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