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Freshwater fluxes to the ocean from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are increasing and influencing multiple aspects of the climate response. As temperatures continue to rise, the influence of freshwater from the melting ice sheets will play a bigger and bigger climate role. However, the evolution of these fluxes is usually not well represented in current climate model simulations as ice sheets are not modelled interactively. We develop plausible, future freshwater forcing scenarios for both ice sheets until 2100 and use both standard-resolution (non-eddying) and high-resolution (eddy-permitting) versions of EC-Earth3 to simulate the response to a high emission scenario. We investigate the effect of this additional freshwater on sea ice, ocean heat uptake and circulation, surface temperatures, and sea level. By comparing the simulations to the HighResMIP EC-Earth3 simulations without these additional freshwater fluxes from ice sheet mass loss as well as the EC-Earth contribution to the Southern Ocean Freshwater release model experiments Initiative (SOFIAMIP), we can discern effects of ocean model resolution and freshwater flux amount., The 28th IUGG General Assembly (IUGG2023) (Berlin 2023)

Change in Land Water Storage (LWS) is one of the main components driving sea-level rise over the twenty-first century. LWS alteration results from both human activities and climate change. Up to now, all components to sea-level change are usually quantified upon a certain climate change scenario except land water changes. Here, we propose to improve this by analyzing the contribution of LWS to regional sea-level change by considering five Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) climate models forced by three different Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) greenhouse gas emission scenarios. For this analysis, we used LWS output of the global hydrological and water resources model, PCR-GLOBWB 2, in order to project regional sea-level patterns. Projections of ensemble means indicate a range of LWS-driven sea-level rise with larger differences in projections among climate models than between scenarios. Our results suggest that LWS change will contribute around 10% to the projected global mean sea-level rise by the end of twenty-first century. Contribution of LWS to regional sea-level rise is projected to be considerably larger than the global mean over several regions, up to 60% higher than global average of LWS-driven sea-level rise, including the Pacific islands, the south coast of Africa and the west coast of Australia.

The accurate quantification of uncertainties in regional sea-level projections is essential for guiding policy makers. As climate models do not currently simulate total sea level, these uncertainties must be quantified through summation of uncertainties in individual sea-level components. This summation depends on the correlation between the components, which has previously been prescribed or derived from each individual component's dependence on global mean surface temperature. In this study, we quantify, for the first time, regional correlations between sea-level components based on regional climate change projections. We compute regional sea-level projections consistent with climate projections from an ensemble of 14 Earth System Models. From the multi-model spread, we estimate the uncertainty in the regional climate's response to greenhouse forcing. To quantify the total uncertainty, we add the uncertainty in the response of sea-level components to this regional climate change. This approach reveals how regional climate processes impose correlations between sea-level components, affecting the total uncertainty. One example is an anti-correlation between North Atlantic sterodynamic change and Antarctic dynamic mass loss, suggesting a teleconnection established by the large-scale ocean circulation. We find that prescribed correlations, applied in the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, lead to a global overestimation in the uncertainty in regional sea-level projections on the order of 20%. Regionally, this overestimation exceeds 100%. We conclude that accurate uncertainty estimates of regional sea-level change must be based on projections of regional climate change and cannot be derived from global indicators such as global mean surface temperature.

Sea-level rise magnifies flood hazards, raising the question when adaptation measures need to be taken. Here, we quantify when the recurrence of extreme water level events will double due to projected sea-level rise. Reproducing the most common method based on extreme water levels observed with tide gauges, at least one third of the coastal locations are to expect a doubling of extremes within a decade. However, tide gauges are commonly placed in wave-sheltered harbours where the contribution of waves to water levels is much smaller than at nearby wave-exposed coastlines such as beaches and dikes. In this study, we quantify doubling times at a variety of idealised shorelines based on modelled tides, storm surges and waves. We apply an extreme value analysis that accounts for the joint probability of extreme storm surges and extreme waves. Our results indicate that doubling times at wave-exposed shorelines are longer than those in wave-sheltered harbours, allowing for more time to adapt to magnified flood hazards. The median doubling times of average water levels including parameterised wave set-up are 1.2 to 5 times longer than those of still water levels as observed with tide gauges. For instantaneous water levels including wave run-up, doubling times are an additional 30% to 100% longer. We conclude that tide gauge-based analyses underestimate adaptation times by underestimating the contribution of waves to extreme water levels, and provide a quantitative framework to guide adaptation policy at wave-exposed shorelines.

The Arctic Mediterranean can be described as a double estuarine circulation regime. This observed circulation feature, which connects the North Atlantic to the Arctic Ocean, is composed of two interconnected branches of circulation: an overturning circulation, where dense water formed in the Nordic Seas returns toward the Atlantic and an estuarine circulation, where the East Greenland Current exits the Arctic Mediterranean. A conceptual box model has previously built upon Henry Stommel’s original version, concluding that a double estuarine circulation is less sensitive to perturbations in northern freshwater input than an overturning circulation in isolation. This extended model exhibits a similar freshwater sensitivity to several coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs), which require about 1 Sv of freshwater input to induce a transition to a qualitatively weakened overturning in the Atlantic Ocean. Besides the amount of freshwater that would be required to abruptly weaken the Atlantic overturning circulation, it is essential to determine over what time scale such a transition could occur. To address this temporal aspect of potential abrupt transitions in a double estuarine circulation, we built a numerical version of the box-model in Stella®. The Stella® version of the Arctic Mediterranean Double Estuarine Circulation model (SAMDEC) is thus a new and widely-available numerical box-model representing the Arctic Mediterranean Double Estuarine Circulation and is intended to provide a numerical tool to easily solve this double estuarine theoretical framework. In addition to its simplicity of use, one of the most important added values of SAMDEC is the ability to easily determine and visualise transition times between two circulation regimes at very low computing cost, making it a valuable tool for research and education. This allows for a quantitative assessment of the response of the Arctic Mediterranean circulation to variable freshwater fluxes and temperature changes over short and long time scales. To highlight the features of SAMDEC, we showcase here two freshwater flux scenarios; 1) increased freshwater input in the Nordic Seas, which is most comparable to common ‘hosing’ experiments; and 2) increased freshwater input in the Nordic Seas and the Arctic. Similar to previous experiments performed with AOGCMs, the weakening caused by realistic freshwater addition is relatively slow during the first 100 years of simulation and increases thereafter. Finally, under a realistic freshwater increase, SAMDEC indicates that 88 to 176 years are needed to achieve a 15% weakening of the overturning. Overall, SAMDEC can provide insights into the dynamic of transition between circulation regimes under changes in freshwater input for both near-future and geological timescale investigations. A light version of the model can be accessed online with any internet browser and the full model can be downloaded, modified and used on a personal computer.

The Arctic Ocean receives a net freshwater input from land and from the atmosphere. This flux of freshwater, along with net surface heat loss, acts to transform the water mass properties of inflowing Atlantic and Pacific waters. In this study, model simulations are used to quantify the Arctic water mass transformation in salinity and temperature space, and its explained variance due to variability in the largest freshwater source to the Arctic: river runoff. This explained variance is quantified using a novel tool, the seasonal climate response function, which describes the magnitude and time scale of adjustment to a runoff perturbation at monthly resolution. Using this method, the transient response of Arctic water mass transformation is reconstructed over time scales ranging from several months to a decade. Model simulations with variable runoff indicate a significant explained model variance of several terms contributing to salinity transformation, including diffusion, the formation and melt of sea ice, and a possibly model‐dependent surface salinity‐restoring term. Most notably, an increase in river runoff strengthens the diffusion of salt and heat, which ultimately leads to an increase in the advective salt and heat import into the Arctic. These results provide evidence for the potential predictability of the Arctic system based on variability in river runoff.

Coastal impacts of climate change and the related mitigation and adaptation needs requires assessments of future sea-level changes. Following a common practice in coastal engineering, probabilistic sea-level projections have been proposed for at least 20 years. This requires a probability model to represent the uncertainties of future sea-level rise, which is not achievable because potential ice sheets mass losses remain poorly understood given the knowledge available today. Here, we apply the principles of extra-probabilistic theories of uncertainties to generate global and regional sea-level projections based on uncertain components. This approach assigns an imprecision to a probabilistic measure, in order to quantify lack of knowledge pertaining to probabilistic projections. This can serve to understand, analyze and communicate uncertainties due to the coexistence of different processes contributing to future sea-level rise, including ice-sheets. We show that the knowledge gained since the 5th Assessment report of the IPCC allows better quantification of how global and regional sea-level rise uncertainties can be reduced with lower greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, Europe and Northern America are among those profiting most from a policy limiting climate change to RCP 2.6 versus RCP 4.5 in terms of reducing uncertainties of sea-level rise.

The Arctic Ocean and the Nordic Seas are freshening, in part due to anthropogenic climate change. Within the northern seas, seawater density is in part dominated by temperature, and in part by salinity. This reflects on the density-driven circulation in the northern seas which consists of two coupled branches of circulation: an overturning branch dominated by temperature, and an estuarine branch dominated by salinity. In order to assess how observed and projected increase in freshwater input into the northern seas can change this circulation, a better understanding of its governing dynamics is required. Using a hierarchy of theory and models, this dissertation studies how freshwater impacts the strength, stability, and variability of the density-driven circulation in the northern seas. Whereas freshwater is commonly perceived as suppressing a temperaturedominated circulation, models of various complexity indicate that increased freshwater input into low-salinity surface waters can spin up the salinity-dominated circulation. This results in a freshwater-induced increase in the poleward transport of Atlantic Water and heat. The coupling of the two circulation branches stabilises the density-driven circulation with respect to perturbations in freshwater, and abrupt transitions in the temperature-dominated circulation can only be induced by sufficient, localized freshwater input into dense surface waters. Finally, the transient response of the temperatureand salinity-modification of AtlanticWater in the Arctic Ocean to perturbations in Arctic river runoff is quantified; this indicates a potential predictability of regional processes at monthly resolution. This dissertation describes the unique behaviour of coupled temperature- and salinitydominated branches of density-driven ocean circulation. It reveals a glimpse of the largely unexplored potential for interaction between subtropical and polar ocean circulation. For the northern seas, this interaction translates into freshwater-sensitivity of the density-driven circulation that appears relatively weak and less dominant than what is commonly understood. As this circulation is integrated in the large-scale ocean circulation beyond the northern seas, these findings would have implications for the sensitivity of the global ocean circulation to future perturbations in high-latitude freshwater input.