Regional Sea-Level Projections using the Energy Exascale Earth System Model
Despite sea-level rise being a major impact of climate change, Earth system models typically predict only the ocean sterodynamic contribution to sea-level change, ignoring or simplifying barystatic (ocean mass) changes and associated regional sea-level variations from gravitational, rotational, and solid-Earth deformation effects, as well as non-climatic contributors. Here we present an in-development sea-level analysis framework for the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) that will eventually combine ocean sterodynamic sea-level changes with barystatic contributions from ice-sheets, glaciers, and land water storage and associated regional sea-level variations. While E3SM can, at present, only represent land ice with a single ice-sheet component, the analysis system is extensible to support multiple ice sheets, as well as mountain glaciers, as those capabilities are developed. In the meantime, sea-level contributors not included in an E3SM simulation can be added from offline simulations. The system is designed to also eventually incorporate E3SM’s ability to simulate tides and waves. We discuss challenges in combining sea-level contributors in a complex Earth system model setting and demonstrate a partial regional sea-level analysis from E3SM simulations to 2100 paired with standalone ice-sheet model simulations.