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Abstract:
Understanding the future fate of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) in the context of anthropogenic CO2 emissions is crucial to predict sea level rise. With the fully coupled Earth
system model of intermediate complexity CLIMBER-X, we study the stability of the GIS
and its transient response to CO2 emissions over the next 10 kyr. Bifurcation points exist at
global temperature anomalies of 0.6 and 1.6 K relative to pre-industrial. For system states
in the vicinity of the equilibrium ice volumes corresponding to these temperature anomalies,
mass loss rate and sensitivity of mass loss to cumulative CO2 emission peak. These critical
ice volumes are crossed for cumulative emissions of 1000 and 2500 GtC, which would cause
long-term sea level rise by 1.8 and 6.9 m respectively. In summary, we find tipping of the
GIS within the range of the temperature limits of the Paris agreement.