Growth and decay of the Iceland Ice Sheet through the last glacial cycle

Abstract. Constraining the dynamic evolution of past ice sheets is critical for unravelling their responses to external forcing and feedbacks over long timescales. This is particularly true in the context of marine ice sheet collapse, as this is one of the largest sources of uncertainty for future sea-level rise projections. The Iceland Ice Sheet (IIS) provides an empirically constrained case study for investigating such an instability, having retreated from a predominantly marine-based ice sheet to isolated mountain ice caps during the last deglaciation. However, previous reconstructions of the IIS have been limited by either sparse data or a restricted exploration of model parameter space, lacking a robust quantification of uncertainties. Here, we address this gap by performing a truncated history matching of the last glacial cycle of the IIS. We use the Glacial Systems Model (GSM) constrained by a curated set of geochronological data to generate an envelope of plausible ice sheet histories.

Our results indicate that numerous asynchronous ice streams effectively drain ice from the interior to the margins, resulting in an extensive yet relatively thin ice sheet. During its local Last Glacial Maximum (23.6–20.9 ka), the IIS reaches the continental shelf edge in most sectors with a total volume of 0.41 to 0.76 metres equivalent sea level (m e.s.l.). In the most extreme, yet plausible, glaciation scenarios, our model reveals an ice bridge connecting the Iceland and Greenland ice over the Denmark Strait.

We find that accelerated ice discharge (at the grounding line) dominates mass loss during deglaciation. This acceleration is primarily driven by atmospheric warming through a cascade of mechanisms: surface meltwater induces hydrofracturing, leading to ice shelf disintegration, which in turn reduces buttressing and triggers rapid ice stream acceleration. The critical role of hydrofracturing in enabling model capture of deglacial data constraints is shown by an explicit sensitivity experiment. This thereby supports inclusion of hydrofracturing for modelling of ongoing ice sheet response to climate change.