Modeling interaction between supraglacial melt lakes and calving in transient Antarctic simulations

Supraglacial melt lakes have been linked to large-scale Antarctic ice shelf collapse, such as those observed at Larsen A and B ice shelves in the early 2000s. As Earth’s climate warms, surface melt and the formation of supraglacial melt lakes are expected to increase. Currently, there is no representation of the impacts of supraglacial melt lakes in large-scale ice sheet modeling. In this work, we implement physics-based parameterizations of supraglacial melt lakes in the Ice Sheet and Sea-Level System Model (ISSM) to simulate their effect on fracture propagation and calving. We described a new physics-based modeling protocol for capturing realistic interactions between surface melt and calving. We show the influence of including these interactions on benchmark ISMIP6 simulations by comparing them to simulations which either (a) do not simulate supraglacial melt lakes or (b) simulate instantaneous collapse of all floating ice in Antarctica. We further discuss caveats with this approach and directions for future research.