Uploaded September 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The warmer it gets, the faster Antarctica loses ice – and much of it will then be gone forever. Consequences for the world’s coastal cities and cultural heritage sites would be detrimental, from London to Mumbai, and from New York to Shanghai. That’s what a team of researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam University and New York’s Columbia University has found out in their new study, published in Nature (cover story), on how much warming the Antarctic Ice Sheet can survive. In around one million hours of computation time, their unprecedentedly detailed simulations delineate where exactly and at which warming levels the ice would become unstable and eventually melt and drain into the ocean. They find a delicate concert of accelerating and moderating effects, but the main conclusion is that unmitigated climate change would have dire long-term consequences: If the global mean temperature level is sustained long enough at 4 degrees above pre-industrial levels, Antarctic melting alone could eventually raise global sea levels by more than six meters.
The animation shows the modelled long-term evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet under steadily increasing temperatures.
The upper panel shows the ice sheet's surface elevation change (in meters; grey shading), the ocean-induced melting at the base of the floating ice shelves (in meters per year; purple–orange shading), as well as the topography of the bed underneath the ice sheet and the surrounding ocean (in meters above the present-day sea level; blue–brown shading).
The lower panel shows the total sea-level relevant ice volume change (in meters of sea-level equivalent ; blue curve) and total ice mass flux (in gigatons per year; purple curve).
Abbreviations: EAIS, East Antarctic Ice Sheet; WAIS, West Antarctic Ice Sheet; IS, ice shelf; FRIS, Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf.
For full details, please refer to the publication below.
This video is supplement to the following article: Julius Garbe, Torsten Albrecht, Anders Levermann, Jonathan F. Donges, Ricarda Winkelmann (2020): The hysteresis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Nature [DOI:10.1038/s41586-020-2727-5]
Weblink to the study: nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2727-5
The warmer it gets, the faster Antarctica loses ice – and much of it will then be gone forever. Consequences for the world’s coastal cities and cultural heritage sites would be detrimental, from London to Mumbai, and from New York to Shanghai. That’s what a team of researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam University and New York’s Columbia University has found out in their new study, published in Nature (cover story), on how much warming the Antarctic Ice Sheet can survive. In around one million hours of computation time, their unprecedentedly detailed simulations delineate where exactly and at which warming levels the ice would become unstable and eventually melt and drain into the ocean. They find a delicate concert of accelerating and moderating effects, but the main conclusion is that unmitigated climate change would have dire long-term consequences: If the global mean temperature level is sustained long enough at 4 degrees above pre-industrial levels, Antarctic melting alone could eventually raise global sea levels by more than six meters.
The animation shows the modelled long-term evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet under steadily increasing temperatures.
The upper panel shows the ice sheet's surface elevation change (in meters; grey shading), the ocean-induced melting at the base of the floating ice shelves (in meters per year; purple–orange shading), as well as the topography of the bed underneath the ice sheet and the surrounding ocean (in meters above the present-day sea level; blue–brown shading).
The lower panel shows the total sea-level relevant ice volume change (in meters of sea-level equivalent ; blue curve) and total ice mass flux (in gigatons per year; purple curve).
Abbreviations: EAIS, East Antarctic Ice Sheet; WAIS, West Antarctic Ice Sheet; IS, ice shelf; FRIS, Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf.
For full details, please refer to the publication below.
This video is supplement to the following article: Julius Garbe, Torsten Albrecht, Anders Levermann, Jonathan F. Donges, Ricarda Winkelmann (2020): The hysteresis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Nature [DOI:10.1038/s41586-020-2727-5]
Weblink to the study: nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2727-5
