Greenland's firn responds more to warming than to cooling
Abstract The porous layer of snow and firn on the Greenland Ice Sheet stores meltwater and limits the rate at which the ice sheet contributes to sea level rise. This buffer is threatened in a warming climate. To better understand the nature and timescales of firn's response to air temperature change on the Greenland Ice Sheet, we use a physics-based model to assess the effects of atmospheric warming and cooling on Greenland's firn air content in idealized climate experiments. We identify an asymmetric response of Greenland's firn to air temperature: firn loses more air content due to warming compared to the amount gained from commensurate cooling. 100 years after a 1 °C temperature perturbation, warming decreases the spatially integrated air content by 9.7 %, and cooling increases it by 8.3 %. In dry firn, this asymmetry is driven by the highly nonlinear relationship between temperature and firn compaction, as well as the dependence of thermal conductivity on the composition of the firn. The influence of liquid water accentuates this asymmetry. In wet firn areas, melt increases nonlinearly with atmospheric warming, thus enhancing firn refreezing and further warming the snowpack through increased latent heat release. Our results highlight the vulnerability of Greenland firn to temperature change and demonstrate that firn air content is more efficiently depleted than generated. This asymmetry in the temperature–firn relationship may contribute to the overall temporally asymmetric mass change of the Greenland Ice Sheet in a changing climate across many timescales.
- Location
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Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
- Extent
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Online-Ressource
- Language
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
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Greenland's firn responds more to warming than to cooling ; volume:18 ; number:7 ; year:2024 ; pages:3333-3350 ; extent:18
The Cryosphere ; 18, Heft 7 (2024), 3333-3350 (gesamt 18)
- Creator
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Thompson-Munson, Megan
Kay, Jennifer E.
Markle, Bradley R.
- DOI
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10.5194/tc-18-3333-2024
- URN
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urn:nbn:de:101:1-2408061450258.851179150752
- Rights
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Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
- Last update
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14.08.2025, 11:03 AM CEST
Data provider
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Associated
- Thompson-Munson, Megan
- Kay, Jennifer E.
- Markle, Bradley R.
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Observed and modeled Greenland firn properties (1980–2020)
Runoff from Greenland's firn area – why do MODIS, RCMs and a firn model disagree?
Peak refreezing in the Greenland firn layer under future warming scenarios
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The Greenland Firn Compaction Verification and Reconnaissance (FirnCover) Dataset, 2013–2019
Observed and modeled Greenland firn properties (1980–2020)
Runoff from Greenland's firn area – why do MODIS, RCMs and a firn model disagree?
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