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Gomez, Natalya Alissa

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Gomez

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Natalya Alissa

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Gomez, Natalya Alissa
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    On Sea Level - Ice Sheet Interactions
    (2014-02-25) Gomez, Natalya Alissa; Mitrovica, Jerry; Huybers, Peter; Ishii, Miaki; O'Connell, Richard
    This thesis focuses on the physics of static sea-level changes following variations in the distribution of grounded ice and the influence of these changes on the stability and dynamics of marine ice sheets. Gravitational, deformational and rotational effects associated with changes in grounded ice mass lead to markedly non-uniform spatial patterns of sea-level change. I outline a revised theory for computing post-glacial sea-level predictions and discuss the dominant physical effects that contribute to the patterns of sea-level change associated with surface loading on different timescales. I show, in particular, that a large sea-level fall (rise) occurs in the vicinity of a retreating (advancing) ice sheet on both short and long timescales. I also present an application of the sea-level theory in which I predict the sea-level changes associated with a new model of North American ice sheet evolution and consider the implications of the results for efforts to establish the sources of Meltwater Pulse 1A. These results demonstrate that viscous deformational effects can influence the amplitude of sea-level changes observed at far-field sea-level sites, even when the time window being considered is relatively short (≤ 500 years).
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    Sea level as a stabilizing factor for marine-ice-sheet grounding lines
    (Springer Nature, 2010) Gomez, Natalya Alissa; Mitrovica, Jerry; Huybers, Peter; Clark, Peter U.
    Climate change could potentially destabilize marine ice sheets, which would affect projections of future sea-level rise1, 2, 3, 4. Specifically, an instability mechanism5, 6, 7, 8 has been predicted for marine ice sheets such as the West Antarctic ice sheet that rest on reversed bed slopes, whereby ice-sheet thinning or rising sea level leads to irreversible retreat of the grounding line. However, existing analyses of this instability mechanism have not accounted for deformational and gravitational effects that lead to a sea-level fall at the margin of a rapidly shrinking ice sheet9, 10, 11. Here we present a suite of predictions of gravitationally self-consistent sea-level change following grounding-line migration. Our predictions vary the initial ice-sheet size and also consider the contribution to sea-level change from various subregions of the simulated ice sheet. Using these results, we revisit a canonical analysis of marine-ice-sheet stability5 and demonstrate that gravity and deformation-induced sea-level changes local to the grounding line contribute a stabilizing influence on ice sheets grounded on reversed bed slopes. We conclude that accurate treatments of sea-level change should be incorporated into analyses of past and future marine-ice-sheet dynamics.
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    Evolution of a Coupled Marine Ice Sheet–Sea Level Model
    (American Geophysical Union, 2012) Gomez, Natalya Alissa; Pollard, David; Mitrovica, Jerry; Huybers, Peter; Clark, Peter U.
    We investigate the stability of marine ice sheets by coupling a gravitationally self-consistent sea level model valid for a self-gravitating, viscoelastically deforming Earth to a 1-D marine ice sheet-shelf model. The evolution of the coupled model is explored for a suite of simulations in which we vary the bed slope and the forcing that initiates retreat. We find that the sea level fall at the grounding line associated with a retreating ice sheet acts to slow the retreat; in simulations with shallow reversed bed slopes and/or small external forcing, the drop in sea level can be sufficient to halt the retreat. The rate of sea level change at the grounding line has an elastic component due to ongoing changes in ice sheet geometry, and a viscous component due to past ice and ocean load changes. When the ice sheet model is forced from steady state, on short timescales (<∼500 years), viscous effects may be ignored and grounding-line migration at a given time will depend on the local bedrock topography and on contemporaneous sea level changes driven by ongoing ice sheet mass flux. On longer timescales, an accurate assessment of the present stability of a marine ice sheet requires knowledge of its past evolution.