Mountain glaciers and ice caps around Antarctica make a large sea‐level rise contribution

Abstract

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the sum of all contributions to sea‐level rise for the period 1961–2004 was 1.1 ± 0.5 mm a −1 , leaving 0.7 ± 0.7 of the 1.8 ± 0.5 mm a −1 observed sea‐level rise unexplained. Here, we compute the global surface mass balance of all mountain glaciers and ice caps (MG&IC), and find that part of this much‐discussed gap can be attributed to a larger contribution than previously assumed from mass loss of MG&IC, especially those around the Antarctic Peninsula. We estimate global surface mass loss of all MG&IC as 0.79 ± 0.34 mm a −1 sea‐level equivalent (SLE) compared to IPCC's 0.50 ± 0.18 mm a −1 . The Antarctic MG&IC contributed 28% of the global estimate due to exceptional warming around the Antarctic Peninsula and high sensitivities to temperature similar to those we find in Iceland, Patagonia and Alaska.