| 12 Oct 2026
Increased future ice loss due to nested ice-climate feedbacks if Antarctic heatwaves intensify
Abstract. Record-breaking extreme events, including heatwaves leading to surface melt and extreme snowfall, have been observed in Antarctica in recent years. Such extreme events are generally expected to become more frequent and intense with anthropogenic climate change. However, they are not typically considered in the climatic forcing used as the surface boundary condition for ice-sheet models projecting Antarctic mass changes into the future. With a suite of numerical ice-sheet simulations, we explore the additional Antarctic contribution to future sea-level rise when including atmospheric temperature extremes of varying frequency and intensity in projections. Our results suggest that by 2100, increasingly severe and frequent heatwaves have a limited effect on sea-level rise. However, by 2300, atmospheric extreme events could amplify sea-level rise by more than 2 m as atmosphere impacts on Antarctica contribute, rather than mitigate, ice loss. This study also highlights substantial uncertainties in ice-atmosphere interactions (e.g. the role of surface albedo) that amplify the sea-level rise response in an interlinked manner and play a key role in determining future sea-level rise.
Competing interests: At least one of the (co-)authors is a member of the editorial board of The Cryosphere.
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