Global glacier mass change and its causes on the centennial time scale

Speaker: 
Ben Marzeion
Affiliation: 
Institut für Geographie, Universität Bremen, Germany
Seminar Date: 
13. May 2016 - 10:15 - 11:00
Location: 
Lecture room, Ground Floor, NERSC

Melting glaciers were likely the dominant cause of sea-level rise during the 20th century. Currently, glaciers are contributing about as much to sea-level rise as the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets combined, and also about as much as thermal expansion. During the 21st century, the relative contribution of glaciers is going to decrease, but they will remain an important part of the sea level budget also within the 22nd and 23rd centuries. I will discuss methods of reconstructing and projecting global glacier mass change, and present their results. I will particularly focus on attribution of glacier mass loss: between 1900 and 2000, anthropogenic climate change was not the dominant cause of glacier mass loss. However, the anthropogenic fraction of mass loss has increased strongly in recent decades and is now responsible for about 2/3 of the entire signal.