Climate and ice sheet evolutions from the last glacial maximum to the pre-industrial period with an ice-sheet–climate coupled model

Abstract

Abstract. The last deglaciation offers an unique opportunity to understand the climate–ice-sheet interactions in a global warming context. In this paper, to tackle this question, we use an Earth system model of intermediate complexity coupled to an ice sheet model covering the Northern Hemisphere to simulate the last deglaciation and the Holocene (26–0 ka). We use a synchronous coupling every year between the ice sheet and the rest of the climate system and we ensure a closed water cycle considering the release of freshwater flux to the ocean due to ice sheet melting. Our reference experiment displays a gradual warming in response to the forcings, with no abrupt changes. In this case, while the amplitude of the freshwater flux to the ocean induced by ice sheet retreat is realistic, it is sufficient to shut down the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation from which the model does not recover within the time period simulated. However, with reduced freshwater flux we are nonetheless able to obtain different oceanic circulation evolutions, including some abrupt transitions between shut-down and active circulation states in the course of the deglaciation. The inclusion of a parameterisation for the sinking of brines around Antarctica also produces an abrupt recovery of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, absent in the reference experiment. The fast oceanic circulation recoveries lead to abrupt warming phases in Greenland. Our simulated ice sheet geometry evolution is in overall good agreement with available global reconstructions, even though the abrupt sea level rise at 14.6 ka is underestimated, possibly because the climate model underestimates the millennial-scale temperature variability. In the course of the deglaciation, large-scale grounding line instabilities are simulated both for the Eurasian and North American ice sheets. The first instability occurs in the Barents–Kara seas for the Eurasian ice sheet at 14.5 ka. A second grounding line instability occurs ca. 12 ka in the proglacial lake that formed at the southern margin of the North American ice sheet. With additional asynchronously coupled experiments, we assess the sensitivity of our results to different ice sheet model choices related to surface and sub-shelf mass balance, ice deformation and grounding line representation. While the ice sheet evolutions differ within this ensemble, the global climate trajectory is only weakly affected by these choices. In our experiments, only the abrupt shifts in the oceanic circulation due to freshwater fluxes are able to produce some millennial-scale variability since no self-generating abrupt transitions are simulated without these fluxes.