Antarctica melting - Climate Change & Nature: New Zealand

Effects & Impacts: Antarctica melting

Larsen C ice shelf fracture image: John Sontag NASA

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Summary

Antarctica is almost twice the size of Australia and contains 90% of the world’s freshwater. It it all melted it would add ~60-70m to sea levels. 125,000 years ago when temperatures and CO₂ levels were similar to that of today, sea levels were ~6-10 metres higher.

Over the past 50 years, the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula (Figs. 2 & 3) has been one of the fastest warming parts of the planet, with air temperatures 3-5 times higher than the average rate of global warming due to polar amplification.

The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS)(Figs. 2 & 3) is not as stable as previously thought and is contributing to rising sea levels. Temperatures there reached 38.5°C above normal in 2022, a new world record for the largest temperature excess ever measured at an established weather station.

The Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) covers islands and land below sea level (Figs. 2-4). This makes it particularly vulnerable to collapse. The Thwaites Glacier is currently of greatest concern. Increasingly warmer ocean water is melting it from below, undercutting it so that it’s collapsing. Nicknamed the ‘Doomsday Glacier’, it acts like a plug, holding back the WAIS ice sheet. In 2026, the eastern ice shelf of the Thwaites Glacier began falling apart.

“Suddenly, large areas are just falling to pieces,” says Christian Wild, from the University of Innsbruck in Austria. “It looks like a windscreen that’s shattering… It’s essentially in free fall now,” Wild added, noting the pace has quickened further over the past five months. – GBN News May 2026

What’s covered on this page:

Maps: Anarctica with and without ice
Glossary of terms: ice cap, ice sheet, marine ice sheet, grounding line, outlet glacier
Processes: how ice sheets melt
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS)
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS)
More information and references

Implications
A first threshold, potentially as low as 1–2 °C above pre-industrial levels, triggers the long-term collapse of ~40% of marine ice volume in West Antarctica. Marine-based sectors in East Antarctica, representing ~5 m of potential sea-level rise, are at risk of losing stability at 2–5 °C. – Winkelmann et al 2026

2024 was warmest year on Earth since direct observations began… 1.62°C above our 1850-1900 average, making it the second year above 1.5°C. – Berkeley Earth, 2025
Video 1: 2023 - Prof.Tim Naish, Wellington University | 7 minute interview

Prof. Naish xplains what Antarctica may be melting faster than anyone realizes, and the implications for humanity are potentially disastrous
Video 2: June 2026 - New Scientist update | 30 minute documentary

Glossary of terms
Ice sheet: continental glaciers that have joined together to cover the surrounding land in an area greater than 50,000 km². There are only three in the world: Greenland, and two in Antarctica: the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS). The existence of these ice sheets are why we are still in an ice age.

Marine ice sheet: an ice sheet whose base is on ground below sea level. This makes it particularly vulnerable to undercutting by warming waters. The WAIS is largely a marine ice sheet.

Outlet glacier: drains inland glaciers/ice sheets through gaps in the surrounding topography. If an outlet glacier reaches the coast (some terminate inland) it can become an:

Ice shelf: a tidewater (coastal) glacier or ice sheet that flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface, where it floats. Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers are outlet glaciers with ice shelves; the Thwaites ice shelf is now breaking up (May 2026).

Grounding line: the point where the bottom or ‘basal’ (bottom) side of a glacier leaves land and extends out over the ocean (Processes | Fig. 1).

Maps
1: Antarctic ice sheets

Antarctica showing the Larsen and Wilkins Ice Shelves, Pine Island Glacier, and Thwaites Glacier — an ice shelf roughly the size of UK (176 x103 km2). The front of the glacier—its terminus—is nearly 120km wide and >1000m below sea level.
2: Antarctica without ice (not accounting for any isostatic rebound)

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) sits largely on islands and underwater trenches. This makes it particularly vulnerable to undercutting and collapse.
3: How Antarctica looked last time temperatures were 1°C - 2°C warmer (~125,000 years ago)

Processes: how ice sheets melt
Bottom up melting from warmer deep ocean waters: Pushed by westerly winds, which are strengthening with climate change, the warm deep (400-700m) saltier layers of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current are pushing closer to the shoreline. This warm water eats away at the underside of ice shelves (which can be well over 1km deep), thinning them from below. Continued undercutting allows more water to travel further under the ice shelf, eroding it and thinning it until it’s detached from the ‘grounding line’ and the ice begins to float.

As the thinning glacier becomes more buoyant, instead of being part of a solid ice mass, it floats at the calving front so it’s pushed up and down with the tides. These forces travel up the length of the glacier, ultimately causing the leading edge to break at the weakest point. Because the glacier is thinner at the front, the slope is steeper so the glacier speeds up due to gravity, allowing huge volumes of ice to surge downstream and into the sea (Fig. 1).

If the grounding line is below sea level, the glacier is prone to undercutting by increasingly warmer ocean waters (Fig. 1).

If land slopes down inland instead of rising upwards, warm ocean currents water flow further beneath the glacier, eroding it and further destabilising it (Fig. 1). Thwaites Glacier, now considered the most unstable is grounded below sea level, and much of the the land behind the grounding line slopes down.
Fig. 1: 'Bottom up' melting

The ice is normally stabilized by sitting on the seafloor. As warm ocean currents eat away at the base, the ice thins, lifts away from the seafloor and breaks, losing its ability to act as a brake on the flow of ice from the continent. Click the image for the interactive webpage.
A small imbalance of forces caused by some perturbation can cause a substantial non-linear response. – Prof. Terry Hughes, ‘The Jakobshavn Effect’

Or as Prof. Jason Box puts it:

There are too many variables that determine exactly when a glacier calves. A single cracking event could conceivably be triggered by a seagull, acting like the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The top down melting was proposed by Jay Zwally when researching the sudden acceleration of the Jakobshavn Isbræ glacier on the west coast of Greenland. Warm air melted ice into giant meltwater lakes on the surface of ice shelves. Because the darker pools have a lower albedo like the ocean, they absorb more heat than the surrounding ice, causing more warming and hence further melting in a self-reinforcing positive feedback effect.
Fig. 2: Meltwater lake
Video 3: Prof. Eric Rignot explains the 'top down' and 'bottom up' processes

West Antarctic Ice Shelf (WAIS) 'A disaster waiting to happen'
Brief history of trying to predict what could—and now is—happening

1968: glaciologist John Mercer voiced concerns that the West Antarctic Ice Shelf (WAIS) could abruptly collapse, leading to a rapid rise in sea levels because the WAIS contains enough ice to add 3.3m to global sea levels:

A disquieting thought is that if the present highly simplified climatic models are even approximately correct, this deglaciation (of the WAIS) may be part of the price that must be paid in order to buy enough time for industrial civilisation to make the changeover from fossil fuels to other sources of energy. – ‘Antarctic Ice and Sangamon Sea Level’, International Association of Scientific Hydrology Symposium 79, pp217–225, 1968 (PDF)

1978: In spite of the geological evidence that past climate change has led to abrupt sea level rise, the notion that a few degrees of warming could have any impact on the coldest place on Earth was largely dismissed:

Mercer’s views, first buried in a publication of the International Association of Scientific Hydrology, caught the attention of policy makers when published in 1978 in Nature under the title ‘West Antarctic ice sheet and CO2 greenhouse effect: A threat of disaster’ … By the late 1980s the notion that loss of ice shelves could lead to disintegration of the entire ice sheet fell out of favour. – Oppenheimer, 2004.

1995: Larsen A Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsular (northern tip of WAIS)—one of the fastest warming areas on the planet—broke apart.

2002: Its neighbour, the Larsen B Ice Shelf, disintegrated in spectacular fashion in just six weeks, not hundreds of years as previously assumed (Video 4):

It was sitting there stable for 10,000 years and then it was just…gone. – Dr. Jeremy Bassis.
Video 4: Larsen B ice shelf collapses
2008: We see things today that five years ago would have seemed completely impossible, extravagant, exaggerated. – Eric Rignot, JPL/NASA in The big thaw, National Geographic

2009: In spite of observations and the growing evidence that similar dramatic ‘non-linear’ abrupt changes to glaciers were being seen in Greenland, the 2009 IPCC 4th Assessment Report stated that sea levels were not likely to be greatly affected by melting glaciers, either from Antarctica or anywhere on Earth, in the twenty-first century. Indeed, the report stated that the continent was ‘too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall.’

Meanwhile Pine Island Glacier the fastest melting glacier in Antarctica that drains about 10% of the WAIS, was already thinning and accelerating.

2017: A section of Larsen C broke off as a single 5,800 km²berg. The scientific scramble to understand these events, which failed to be predicted by the climate models, had in fact been underway since 1986, with similar abrupt collapses being seen in Greenland.

2018: Massive chunks broke off Pine Island Glacier (Video 6). Then more broke off in 2020.
Video 5: Pine Island Glacier

The fastest moving glacier in Antarctica is being undercut by warm ocean currents, causing its grounding line to retreat for the same reasons as the much larger Thwaites Glacier.
2021: The massive Thwaites Glacier ice shelf was projected to collapse before 2030 because the Jakobshavn effect observed in Greenland was also happening here, particularly to the eastern section of the shelf (Video 5).
Video 6: The collapse of the Hektoria ice shelf and glacier
2022-23: The Hektoria Glacier has lost half of its ice, some 25km, between January and March (Video 7).
Video 7: The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration

The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration: scientists are investigating whether Thwaites Glacier may collapse in the next few decades or centuries, and how this could affect future global sea-level rise.
2023: Researchers discovered that a particular species of octopus was traversing open water where much of the WAIS now rests (Maps 2 & 3 show what an open water passage would look like.)

Using genetic analyses of a type of circum-Antarctic octopus, Pareledone turqueti, Lau et al. showed that the WAIS collapsed completely during the last interglacial period, when global sea levels were 5 to 10 meters higher than today and global average temperatures were only about 1°C warmer. – Science Editorial, 2023

2024:

Satellite data show that seawater is being flushed beneath the grounding zone of Thwaites Glacier by the tides, perhaps as far as 12 km, triggering vigorous melting. As ocean temperatures increase, this tidal pumping mechanism may lead to runaway melting under many areas of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. This recently-highlighted process could potentially double sea-level rise from Antarctica.

Current models used to generate global projections of sea-level rise, such as those that informed the last IPCC report (2022), do not adequately represent this process, meaning that future sea-level rise from Antarctica may be substantially underestimated. – UNESCO State of the Cryosphere 2024

2026: Collapse of Thwaites Glacier ice shelf now underway (Video 8):

“Suddenly, large areas are just falling to pieces,” says Christian Wild, from the University of Innsbruck in Austria. “It looks like a windscreen that’s shattering….It’s essentially in free fall now,” Wild added, noting the pace has quickened further over the past five months – New Scientists 18 May 2026
Video 8: 'The Thwaites 'Doomsday' Glacier's Ice Shelf is About to Break Away' May 2026

New Scientist:;The Thwaites ‘Doomsday’ Glacier’s Ice Shelf is About to Break Away, May 2026
2026: Pine Island Glacier, the fastest flowing glacier in Antarctica is accelerating

The ice shelf that buttresses it has undergone significant change in the last decade, resulting in a 20% increase in ice velocity. – Wells-Moran et al, PNAS 11 August 2026

East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS)
Until a few years ago, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS), which contains enough ice to raise global sea levels ~54m if it all melted, was considered relatively stable. This was in part due to the bulk of the icecap sitting on land rather than the seabed (Map 2). However, measurements using satellite records from 1979 to 2017 show that the EIAS had contributed about 30% to rising sea levels during this period, in part because as the climate warmed, stronger polar westerly winds were pushing more of the warmer circumpolar deep water current toward outlet glaciers, undercutting them (Fig. 1 and Video 9).

These outlet glaciers with ice shelves behave in the same way as the WAIS outlet glaciers, however they hold back the far larger EAIS. In 2022, this led to the abrupt collapse of the Conger Ice Shelf.
Fig. 1: 'Bottom up' melting

The ice is normally stabilized by sitting on the seafloor. As warm ocean currents eat away at the base, the ice thins, lifts away from the seafloor and breaks, losing its ability to act as a brake on the flow of ice from the continent. Click the image for the interactive webpage.
Video 9: Prof. Matt King, Director of the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science outlines the changes and surprises emerging from East Antarctica and the massive reduction in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.

Prof. Matt King, Director of the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science outlines the changes and surprises emerging from East Antarctica and the massive reduction in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
In 2017, other researchers found more than 65,000 meltwater lakes on the EAIS. While most lakes were found on outlet glaciers, thousands were seen up to 50km inland on the ice sheet, and as high as 1500m altitude (Figs. 3 & 4). For inland and high altitude lakes to form, surface temperatures need to be well above freezing, and for sustained periods. These may not play as large a role as the warm deep waters along the WAIS, but they are also being seen on the southern coasts of the EIS, which is also vulnerable to warm deep waters (Fig. 4a).
Fig. 3: 'Top down' melting on the EAIS
Fig. 4: 'Supraglacial lakes (SGLs) in East Antarctica'

“Location and density of supraglacial lakes (SGLs) in East Antarctica, alongside examples. (a) Location of 65,459 mapped lakes that appeared on imagery from January 2017, each marked by a red cross. (b) Lake density map showing the cumulative area of SGLs within 1 km2 cells using a 50 km search radius. (c,d) Sentinel 2A satellite image (12th Jan 2017) of the high density of lakes on the Jutulstraumen Glacier, Dronning Maud Land. Note that lakes have developed above and beyond the grounding line (thick black line), but there is a clustering of lakes 5–10 km down-ice from the grounding line. (e,f) Sentinel 2A satellite image (27th Jan 2017) of clusters of lakes towards the ice sheet margin in Kemp Land.” (Stokes et al., click on the image to see the full report).
For reasons explained in Video 10, these may not play as large a role as the warm deep waters along the WAIS, but they are also being seen on the southern coasts of the EIS, which is also vulnerable to warm deep waters (Fig. 4a).
Video 10: How hidden lakes threaten Antarctic Ice Sheet stability

How hidden lakes threaten Antarctic Ice Sheet stability
About 400,000 years ago…the global temperature was 1 to 2 degrees Celsius greater. Data indicate[s] that the ice sheet margin at the Wilkes Basin (EAIS) retreated to about 700 kilometres inland from the current position, which—assuming current ice volumes—would have contributed about 3 to 4 metres to global sea levels. – Blackburn et al, July 2020

Recently, relatively warm waters that are normally found offshore are coming onto the Antarctic continental shelves, threatening the stability of East Antarctic ice shelves. – Ribeiro et al, 2023

Totten Glacier hosts the most rapidly thinning ice in East Antarctica. This record of thinning is due to rapid melt along the grounding line of the Totten Ice Shelf (TIS), where warm ocean water from the open ocean flows into ice shelf cavities… – Nakayama et al, 2023

The loss of the Conger–Glenzer ice shelf in 2022 was the culmination of a multidecadal process of disintegration, signalling East Antarctica may not be as stable as we once thought. – Walker et al, 2024

More information

High Resolution Simulation of melting Antarctic ice: NCI Australia

Explainer: Polar Amplification
Arctic or Polar Amplification are terms used to describe why the poles are warming far faster than the rest of the planet. There are several reasons for this:
Image: Nathan Kurtz / NASA
- The Albedo Effect: Clean ice and snow have a very high albedo, that is, they reflect up to 90% of solar radiation back into space. The ocean is much darker, so it has a very low albedo, reflecting only about 6% of the incoming solar radiation and absorbing the other 94%, warming it much faster than the snow and ice. This feedback effect then leads to more warming, then more melting, and so on.
- Ozone-depleting substances (this is a new area of research: see here for how this is happening).
- Air pressure differences between the tropics and the poles may also be a factor: warmer (and therefore denser, higher pressure) air tends to travel from the tropics to the cooler (lower pressure less dense air) poles (see 5-min. Video 1 here). However, weather systems are stalling as the jet stream wobbles. While this allows cold arctic air to move further south for longer periods, it also allows warmer tropical air to invade polar latitudes. A very small rise in temperatures for long periods is leading to dramatic melting in Greenland and Arctic sea ice, as well as Antarctica.
- Climate system feedbacks have also changed ocean currents as well as the weather associated with them.

Explainer: The WAIS is below sea level

Firstly, not all of the WAIS is below sea level (Maps 1-3). And most importantly ice shelves that are anchored to bedrock act as dams or buttresses that hold back ice sheets that are entirely on the land. If they break up, this allows ice sheets to flow into the ocean.

Secondly, glaciers and ice caps that sit below sea level do not contribute to sea-level rise until they melt, as the water in them is stored in a concentrated form (ice) in relatively small locations: in this case, Antarctica is storing water as ice that’s many kilometres thick. When it melts, instead of staying in this massive column of ice over Antarctica, the water is distributed across all of the world’s oceans. How much this and other factors contribute to sea levels rising, is covered here.

References and further reading
World Glacier Monitoring Service

2026; Gunn et al; Persistent Warming and Reduced Freshening of the Abyssal Southern Ocean, AGU 27 August (open access)

2026: Wells-Moran et al, Near-total loss of buttressing stresses observed on Pine Island Ice Shelf, West Antarctica, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

2026: Blasco et al; Fracture-driven weakening amplifies projected ice loss from West Antarctica, PNAS 123 | 28, 6 July (Open access)

2026: Golledge et al; Ice-sheet regime shifts with climate warming, Nature Geoscience Article June 05

2026: Zhou et al; Channelized topography amplifies melt-sensitivity of cold Antarctic ice shelves, Nature Communications Article 17 | 3790 (Open access)

2026: Martin et al; Rates of Sea-Level Rise Are Highly Sensitive to Ice Viscosity Parameters in Model Benchmarks, AGU Advances 04 March

Plain English article: Glaciers May Flow into the Ocean More Quickly Than We Think

2026: Nature Geoscience editorial: Ice sheets big and small (open access)

2026: Winkelmann et al; Mapping tipping risks from Antarctic ice basins under global warming, Nature Climate Change 16 pp341-349 (Open access)

2026: Mawbey et al; Ocean heat forced West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreat after the Last Glacial Maximum, Nature Communications 17 | 2079 (Open access)

2026: Struve et al; South Pacific carbon uptake controlled by West Antarctic Ice Sheet dynamics Nature Geoscience 18 pp173-181 (Open access)

2025: Suganuma et al; Antarctic ice-shelf collapse in Holocene driven by meltwater release feedbacks, Nature Geoscience 18 pp1216-1223 (Open access)

2025: May & Bassis; Estimating glacier ice thickness and yield strength using surface elevation and the perfect-plastic approximation, Journal of Glaciology 71

2025: Australian Antarctic Research Program Partnership: Research and impacts; The roles of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean in the global climate system (open access storyboard)

2025: State of the Cryosphere Report, International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), Stockholm, Sweden

2025: Australian Antarctic Research Program Partnership: A world with less (open access storyboard)

2025: Izeboud et al; Damage development on Antarctic ice shelves sensitive to climate warming, Nature Climate Change 15 pp 1333-1339

2025: Nauels et al; Multi-century global and regional sea-level rise commitments from cumulative greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades, Nature Climate Change 15 pp1198-1204 (open access)

2025: Burgard et al; Ocean warming threatens the viability of 60% of Antarctic ice shelves, Nature 647 pp102-108

2025: Meredith et al; Antarctica and the Earth System Book 336 pages (Free to download) “This book presents a state-of-the-art overview of the role that Antarctica and the Southern Ocean play as integral parts of the Earth System.”

2025: Mottram et al; The Greenlandification of Antarctica Nature Geoscience 18 pp928-930

2025: O’Connor et al; Enhanced West Antarctic ice loss triggered by polynya response to meridional winds, Nature Geoscience 18 pp 840-847

2025: Abram et al; Emerging evidence of abrupt changes in the Antarctic environment Nature 644, pp621–633

2025: O’Connor et al; Enhanced West Antarctic ice loss triggered by polynya response to meridional winds, Nature Geoscience, 18 pp 840–847

2025: Horgan et al; A West Antarctic grounding-zone environment shaped by episodic water flow Nature Geoscience article (open access)

Plain English: New Zealand Scientists Unlock Antarctic Ice Melt Mystery

2025: Chandler et al; Antarctic Ice Sheet tipping in the last 800,000 years warns of future ice loss, Nature Communications Earth & Environment 6 |420 (Open access)

2025: Stokes et al; Warming of +1.5 °C is too high for polar ice sheets Nature Communications Earth & Environment (Open access)

2025: Ong et al; Transient Antarctic Slope Current Response to Climate Change Including Meltwater, Geophysical Research Letters 21 May (Open access)

Plain English: An uncertain future for the Antarctic Slope Current

Plain English: Antarctica has its own ‘shield’ against warm water – but this could now be under threat

2025: Horgan et al; A West Antarctic grounding-zone environment shaped by episodic water flow, Nature Geoscience 18 pp389-395 (Open access)

2025: Song et al; Regional conditions determine thresholds of accelerated Antarctic basal melt in climate projection, Nature Climate Change 15 pp521-527 (Open access)

2025: Meredith et al [eds.]; Antarctica and the Earth System, Routledge 2025 (Book; also open access PDF)

2025: Mizobata et al; Ocean Response Along the East Antarctic Coastal Margin to the Southern Annular Mode, Geophysical Research Letters 15 March (Open access)

Plain English article in Phys.org

2025: Zhao et al; Subglacial water amplifies Antarctic contributions to sea-level rise, Nature Communications 16 | 3187 (Open access)

Plain English article in The Conversation

2025: Fricker et al; Antarctica in 2025: Drivers of deep uncertainty in projected ice loss, Science 387 | 6744 pp601-609

2025: Willie et al; Atmospheric rivers in Antarctica, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 11 February

2025: Wolff et al; The Ronne Ice Shelf survived the last interglacial, Nature article 29 January (Open access)

2024: Steiger et al; Observed Pathways and Interannual Variability of the Warm Inflow Onto the Continental Shelf in the Southern Weddell Sea, JGR Oceans 14 November (Open access)

Plain English article in Eons

2024: Twelves et al; Chlorophyll Production in the Amundsen Sea Boosts Heat Flux to Atmosphere and Weakens Heat Flux to Ice Shelves, JGR Oceans 17 September (Open access)

Plain English article in Eons

2024: ICCI: State of the Cryosphere, Lost Ice, Global Damage, International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), Stockholm, Sweden (PDF)

2024: NOAA Arctic Report Card 2024

2024: Walker et al; Multi-decadal collapse of East Antarctica’s Conger–Glenzer Ice Shelf, Nature Geoscience 03 December (links to full paper)

Plain English article (Open access)

2024: Goessling et al; Recent global temperature surge intensified by record-low planetary albedo, Science, 05 Dec. 2024

2024: Hill et al; Ocean warming as a trigger for irreversible retreat of the Antarctic ice sheet, Nature Climate Change 14 pp1165-1171 (Open access)

2024: Husman et al; Physically-Informed Super-Resolution Downscaling of Antarctic Surface Melt, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems 16|72

2024: Seroussi et al; Evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet Over the Next Three Centuries From an ISMIP6 Model Ensemble, AGU 04 September (Open access)

2024: Griffiths et al; Antarctic benthic ecological change, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 5 pp645-664

2024: Bradley & Hewitt; Tipping point in ice-sheet grounding-zone melting due to ocean water intrusion, Nature Geoscience 25 June (Open access)

Plain English discussion: The critical role of ‘grounding zones’ in the retreat of Earth’s ice sheets

2024: North & Barrows; High-resolution elevation models of Larsen B glaciers extracted from 1960s imagery, Nature Scientific Reports 14 | 14536 (Open access)

2024: Dell et al; Substantial contribution of slush to meltwater area across Antarctic ice shelves, Nature Geoscience 27 June (Open access)

Plain English discussion: Twice as much meltwater: slush on Antarctic ice shelves was underestimated

2024: Rignot et al; Widespread seawater intrusions beneath the grounded ice of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica, PNAS 121 (22) (Open access)

2024: Bett et al; Coupled ice–ocean interactions during future retreat of West Antarctic ice streams in the Amundsen Sea sector, EGU 18|6

2024 Macha et al; Distinct Central and Eastern Pacific El Niño Influence on Antarctic Surface Mass Balance, Geophysical Research Letters 10 June (Open access)

2024: Banwell et al; Observed meltwater-induced flexure and fracture at a doline on George VI Ice Shelf, Antarctica; Cambridge University Press, 03 May

2024: Yeung et al; Last Interglacial subsurface warming on the Antarctic shelf triggered by reduced deep-ocean convection; Nature Communications Earth & Environment (Open access)

2024: Lowry et al; Ocean cavity regime shift reversed West Antarctic grounding line retreat in the late Holocene, Nature Communications 15 | 3176, 23 April

2024: Gibney; Climate change has slowed Earth’s rotation — and could affect how we keep time, Nature News 27 March

2024: Stoeckl et al; The value of Antarctic and Southern Ocean ecosystem services, Nature Reviews Earth and Environment

2024: Grieman et al; Abrupt Holocene ice loss due to thinning and ungrounding in the Weddell Sea Embayment, Nature Geoscience 17 pp227-232 (Open access)

2024; Clark et al; Synchronous retreat of Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers in response to external forcings in the presatellite era, PNAS Research article (note: the paper was written in 2022; published 2024)(Open access)

Plain English description: Significant glacial retreat in West Antarctica began in 1940s – British Antarctic Survey

2024; Grieman et al; Abrupt Holocene ice loss due to thinning and ungrounding in the Weddell Sea Embayment, Nature Geoscience article (Open access)

2024; Miles & Bingham; Progressive unanchoring of Antarctic ice shelves since 1973, Nature 626 pp785-791 (Open access)

2024: Wille et al; The Extraordinary March 2022 East Antarctica “Heat” Wave. Part I: Observations and Meteorological Drivers, AMS Journal of Climate, pp757-778

2024; Wille et al; The Extraordinary March 2022 East Antarctica “Heat” Wave. Part II: Impacts on the Antarctic Ice Sheet, AMS Journal of Climate, pp779-799

2024: Lau et al; Genomic evidence for West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse during the Last Interglacial, Science 382|6677 (Open access)

2023: Levy et al; Melting ice and rising seas – connecting projected change in Antarctica’s ice sheets to communities in Aotearoa New Zealand, Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 54 | 4 (Open access)

2023: Constable et al; Marine Ecosystem Assessment for the Southern Ocean; Summary for Policymakers, Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research & Integrated Marine Biosphere Research (Open access)

World Glacier Monitoring Service

Interactive global map including fluctuation in New Zealand glaciers

2023: Sadatzki et al; Early sea ice decline off East Antarctica at the last glacial–interglacial climate transition, Science Advances 9|41 (Open access)

2023: Lauber et al; Warming beneath an East Antarctic ice shelf due to increased subpolar westerlies and reduced sea ice, Nature Geoscience 16 pp877 – 885 (Open access)

2023: King et al; Climate variability a key driver of recent Antarctic ice-mass change, Nature Geoscience 16 pp1128 – 1135

2023: Washam et al; Direct observations of melting, freezing, and ocean circulation in an ice shelf basal crevasse, Science Advances, 27 October (Open access)

2023: New Antarctic ice shelf-ocean model makes a splash; Australian Antarctic Program (08 November)

2023: State of the Cryosphere – Two Degrees is Too High. International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), Stockholm, Sweden (PDF)

2023: Ribeiro et al; Oceanic Regime Shift to a Warmer Continental Shelf Adjacent to the Shackleton Ice Shelf, East Antarctica, AGU/JGR November (Open access)

2023: Naughton et al; Unavoidable future increase in West Antarctic ice-shelf melting over the twenty-first century. Nature Climate Change (Open access)

Plain English article here (this website under ‘News’)

2023: Purich & Doddridge; Record low Antarctic sea ice coverage indicates a new sea ice state, Nature Communications (Open access)

2023: Casado et al; The quandary of detecting the signature of climate change in Antarctica, Nature Climate Change Article, 07 September

2023: Nakayama et al; Helicopter-Based Ocean Observations Capture Broad Ocean Heat Intrusions Toward the Totten Ice Shelf. Geophyscial Research Letters 50 |17 (Open access)

2023: Seigert et al; Antarctic Extreme Events, Frontiers in Environmental Science, 08 August 2023 (Open access)

2023: Roble et al; Contemporary ice sheet thinning drives subglacial groundwater exfiltration with potential feedbacks on glacier flow, Science Advances 9 | 33 18 August (Open access)

2023: Li et al; Satellite record reveals 1960s acceleration of Totten Ice Shelf in East Antarctica, Nature Communications 14 | 4061

2023: Li et al, Abyssal ocean overturning slowdown and warming driven by Antarctic meltwater, Nature 615 pp841–847

2023: Gómez-Valdivia et al; Projected West Antarctic Ocean Warming Caused by an Expansion of the Ross Gyre, Geophysical Research Letters, 50 |6

2023: Batchelor et al; Rapid, buoyancy-driven ice-sheet retreat of hundreds of metres per day, Nature article April 2023

Guardian article explanation in plain English: Ice sheets can collapse at 600 metres a day, far faster than feared, study finds (open access).

2023: Park et al; Future sea-level projections with a coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice-sheet model, Nature Communications 14 | 636 (open access)

2023: Jordan et al; Increased warm water intrusions could cause mass loss in East Antarctica during the next 200 years, Nature Communications 14 | 1825

2023: Schmidt et al; Heterogeneous melting near the Thwaites Glacier grounding line, Nature 614, pp471–478

Jones, Nature news article on the above research

2023:Wessem et al; Variable temperature thresholds of melt pond formation on Antarctic ice shelves Nature Climate Change 248

‘Gatekeepers of Antarctica‘ storyboard

2023: Richter et al; The impact of tides on Antarctic ice shelf melting, The Cryosphere EGU 16 |4 pp1409-1429 (Open access)

2022: State of the Cryosphere

2022: Berkeley Earth: Antarctic Heatwave: A Rapid Analysis of the March 2022 Dome C Record Heatwave

National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC)

The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration

2022: Heguenin et al; Drivers and distribution of global ocean heat uptake over the last half century, Nature Communications 13 | 4921 (open access)

Plain English article explaining the research (this website)

2022: Graham et al; Rapid retreat of Thwaites Glacier in the pre-satellite era, Nature Geoscience 15 pp 706–713

2022: Dow et al; Antarctic basal environment shaped by high-pressure flow through a subglacial river system, Nature Geoscience 15 pp 892-898

2022: Herraiz-Borreguero and Garabato; Poleward shift of Circumpolar Deep Water threatens the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, Nature Climate Change 12, pp728-734

2022: Watson; World’s largest ice sheet threatened by warm water surge, Nature News 12 August (plain English).

2022: Gilbert et al; A 20-year study of melt processes over Larsen C Ice Shelf using a high-resolution regional atmospheric model: Part 2, Drivers of surface melting, AGU| JGR Atmospheres (pre-publication April; open access)

2022 Gilbert, Guest post: Ranking the reasons why the Larsen C ice shelf is melting, Carbon Brief 08 April (plain English)

2022: Braddock et al; Relative sea-level data preclude major late Holocene ice-mass change in Pine Island Bay, Nature Geoscience 15 pp568-572

2022: Horgan and Stevens; Exploring Antarctica’s hidden under-ice rivers and their role in future sea-level rise, Sciblogs

2022: Gudmundsson et al; Conger ice shelf has collapsed: what you need to know, according to experts, The Conversation

2021: Wild et al; Weakening of the pinning point buttressing Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica; Preprint, The Crysphere / European Geosciences Union. (Youtube video presentation)

2021: Jacobs et al; The Arctic Is Now Warming Four Times As Fast As the Rest of the Globe, AGU Fall Meeting 13-17 December

2021: Weber et al; Decadal-scale onset and termination of Antarctic ice-mass loss during the last deglaciation, Nature Communications 12, Article number: 6683

2021: Witze; Giant cracks push imperilled Antarctic glacier closer to collapse, Nature News

2021: Eayrs et al: Rapid decline in Antarctic sea ice in recent years hints at future change, Nature Geoscience

Eayrs; Guest post Deciphering the rise and fall of Antarctic sea ice extent (plain English open access article on Carbon Brief).

2021: Gilbert; The fate of Antarctic ice shelves at 1.5C, 2C and 4C of warming

2021: Wåhlin et al; Pathways and modification of warm water flowing beneath Thwaites Ice Shelf, West Antarctica, Science Advances 7 | 15, eabd7254

2021: Slater et al; Review article: Earth’s ice imbalance, The Cryosphere, 15, pp233–246

2020: Jordan et al; New gravity-derived bathymetry for the Thwaites, Crosson, and Dotson ice shelves revealing two ice shelf populations, The Cryosphere 14 pp2869–2882

2020: Hogan et al; Revealing the former bed of Thwaites Glacier using sea-floor bathymetry: implications for warm-water routing and bed controls on ice flow and buttressing, The Cryosphere 14 pp2883–2908

2020: Lai et al; Vulnerability of Antarctica’s ice shelves to meltwater-driven fracture Nature 584 pp574–578

Nature article (open access) about the above research: Crevasse analysis reveals vulnerability of ice shelves to global warming

2020: Blackburn et al: Ice retreat in Wilkes Basin of East Antarctica during a warm interglacial Nature 583 pp554–559

2020: Clem et al; Record warming at the South Pole during the past three decades, Nature Climate Change

Carbon Brief discussion on this University of Wellington research

2020: Thomas et al; Tipping elements and amplified polar warming during the Last Interglacial, Quaternary Science Reviews 233 / 106222

2020: Ortega; Unusual Arctic warming explained by overlooked greenhouse gases, Science

2020: Smith; The unexpected link between the ozone hole and arctic amplification, The Conversation

2020: Turney et al; Early Last Interglacial ocean warming drove substantial ice mass loss from Antarctica, 117 (8) 3996-4006

2020: Hulbe; Guest post How close is the West Antarctic ice sheet to a ‘tipping point’? Carbon Brief

2020: England et al; Tropical climate responses to projected Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice loss Nature Geoscience 13, pp275–281

2020: Velicogna et al; Continuity of ice sheet mass loss in Greenland and Antarctica from the GRACE and GRACE Follow-Onmissions, Geophysical Research Letters, 47/8 GL087291

2020: The Guardian Antarctic temperature rises above 20C for first time on record

2020: Robel et al; A Speed Limit on Ice Shelf Collapse through Hydrofracture, Geophysical Research Letters, 46/21

2019: Rohling et al; Asynchronous Antarctic and Greenland ice-volume contributions to the last interglacial sea-level highstand, Nature Communications 10 | 5040 (Open access)

The Conversation explanation in plain English: Scientists looked at sea levels 125,000 years in the past. The results are terrifying

2019 NIWA: New Zealand Fluvial and Pluvial Flood Exposure; prepared for Deep South Challenge

2019 NIWA: Coastal Flooding Exposure Under Future Sea-level Rise for New Zealand; prepared for Deep South Challenge

2019: Stokes et al; Widespread distribution of supraglacial lakes around the margin of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, Nature Scientific Reports 9 13823

2019: Rignot et al; Four decades of Antarctic Ice Sheet mass balance from 1979–2017, PNAS 116 (4) 1095-1103

2019 NSIDC: ice shelves

2019: Pitcher & Smith; Supraglacial rivers and streams, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 47, pp421-452

2019: Cheng et al; How fast are the oceans warming? Science 363/6423 pp128-129

2019 IPCC: Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate

2018 Nature editorial; The scientist who predicted ice-sheet collapse — 50 years ago

2018 IPCC: Summary for Policymakers of IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C approved by governments

2017: Scambos et al; How much, how fast?: A science review and outlook for research on the instability of Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier in the 21st century, Global and Planetary Change 153, pp16-34

2011: Schmidt et al: Abrupt Climate Change During the Last Ice Age, Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):11

2014: Durand et al; Retreat of Pine Island Glacier controlled by marine ice-sheet instability, Nature Climate Change 4, pp117–121

2007: IPCC 4th Assessment Report: The Physical Science Basis

2004: Openheimer; Global warming and the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, Nature 393,/6683 pp325-332.

2004: Thomas et al; Force-perturbation analysis of recent thinning and acceleration of Jakobshavn Isbrae, Greenland, Journal of Glaciology. 50/168: 57–66

2002: Zwally et al; Surface Melt-Induced Acceleration of Greenland Ice-Sheet Flow, Science 297/5579 pp218–222.

1986: Hughes; The Jakobshavn Effect. Geophys. Res. Lett.13/1: 46–48.

1978: Mercer; West Antarctic Ice Sheet and CO2 Greenhouse Effect: A Threat of Disaster, Nature 271, pp321–325.

1968: Mercer; ‘Antarctic Ice and Sangamon Sea Level’, Int. Assoc. Sci. Hydrol. Symp. 79, pp217–225

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