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Antarctic ice loss speeding up

Shrinking continent is losing ice faster today than a decade ago.

Eric Hand
News13 Jan 2008
Nature
Half a century of dynamic instability following the ocean-driven break-up of Wordie Ice Shelf

Historical images show that Antarctica’s Wordie Ice Shelf has disintegrated due to rising basal melt since the 1960s, causing varied glacier responses and highlighting the need for long-term observations to improve predictions of Antarctic ice loss.

Mads Dømgaard
Romain Millan
Anders A. Bjørk
ResearchOpen Access29 Apr 2025
Nature Communications

Volume: 16, P: 1-11
Deep glacial troughs and stabilizing ridges unveiled beneath the margins of the Antarctic ice sheet

A high-resolution update of Antarctic bed topography using mass conservation reveals broad stabilizing ridges for glaciers flowing across the Transantarctic Mountains, and stabilizing slopes beneath Moscow University, Totten and Lambert glacier system.

Mathieu Morlighem
Eric Rignot
Duncan A. Young
Research12 Dec 2019
Nature Geoscience

Volume: 13, P: 132-137
Rapid submarine ice melting in the grounding zones of ice shelves in West Antarctica

Ice-shelf bottom melting is thought to cause mass loss in West Antarctica. Here, the authors analyse radar observations of the Dotson and Crosson ice shelves to directly quantify grounding zone unbalanced melting of up to 70 m per year, and illustrate its relation with bed topography and grounding line retreat.

Ala Khazendar
Eric Rignot
Isabella Velicogna
ResearchOpen Access25 Oct 2016
Nature Communications

Volume: 7, P: 1-8
Automatic delineation of glacier grounding lines in differential interferometric synthetic-aperture radar data using deep learning

Yara Mohajerani
Seongsu Jeong
Pietro Milillo
ResearchOpen Access02 Mar 2021
Scientific Reports

Volume: 11, P: 1-10
Bedmap3 updated ice bed, surface and thickness gridded datasets for Antarctica

Hamish D. Pritchard
Peter T. Fretwell
Achille Zirizzotti
ResearchOpen Access10 Mar 2025
Scientific Data

Volume: 12, P: 1-20
Rapid submarine melting of the calving faces of West Greenland glaciers

Widespread glacier acceleration has been observed in Greenland in the past few years. Oceanographic observations taken in summer 2008 show that ocean waters melted a substantial fraction of ice along the calving fronts of three West Greenland glaciers, indicating that submarine melting has a profound influence on grounding-line stability.

Eric Rignot
Michele Koppes
Isabella Velicogna
Research14 Feb 2010
Nature Geoscience

Volume: 3, P: 187-191
Recent Antarctic ice mass loss from radar interferometry and regional climate modelling

Observed estimates of ice losses in Antarctica combined with regional modelling of ice accumulation in the interior suggest that East Antarctica is close to a balanced mass budget, but large losses of ice occur in the narrow outlet channels of West Antarctic glaciers and at the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula.

Eric Rignot
Jonathan L. Bamber
Erik van Meijgaard
Research13 Jan 2008
Nature Geoscience

Volume: 1, P: 106-110
Suppressed basal melting in the eastern Thwaites Glacier grounding zone

Despite observations from a hot-water-drilled access hole showing warm ocean waters beneath Thwaites Glacier Eastern Ice Shelf, the basal melt rate is strongly suppressed due to the low current speeds and strong density stratification.

Peter E. D. Davis
Keith W. Nicholls
Keith Makinson
ResearchOpen Access15 Feb 2023
Nature

Volume: 614, P: 479-485
Extensive inland thinning and speed-up of Northeast Greenland Ice Stream

Analysis of global navigation satellite system observations and satellite data shows that frontal changes in 2012 of the North-East Greenland Ice Stream led to speed-up and thinning at least 200 km inland.

Shfaqat A. Khan
Youngmin Choi
Anders A. Bjørk
ResearchOpen Access09 Nov 2022
Nature

Volume: 611, P: 727-732
Origin of Circumpolar Deep Water intruding onto the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Sea continental shelves

Upwelling circumpolar deep water (CDW) is destabilising West Antarctic ice shelves, yet offshore pathways and drivers remain unclear. Here, using a regional circulation model, the authors show that pathways are controlled by large-scale atmospheric and ocean circulations.

Yoshihiro Nakayama
Dimitris Menemenlis
Eric Rignot
ResearchOpen Access24 Aug 2018
Nature Communications

Volume: 9, P: 1-9
Observations of grounding zones are the missing key to understand ice melt in Antarctica

Ice melt processes that take place at the ice–ocean boundary of Greenland and Antarctic glaciers play a pivotal role in their evolution and contribution to sea-level rise, but widespread observations in these regions are lacking. A major observational initiative will be necessary to drastically reduce uncertainties in projections and better prepare society for sea-level rise.

Eric Rignot
Comments & Opinion21 Sept 2023
Nature Climate Change

Volume: 13, P: 1010-1013
Observed latitudinal variations in erosion as a function of glacier dynamics

Erosion and velocity data from 15 outlet glaciers covering temperate to polar glacier thermal regimes from Patagonia to the Antarctic Peninsula reveal that over the past century the basin-averaged erosion rates vary by three orders of magnitude as a function of climate across this latitudinal transect.

Michéle Koppes
Bernard Hallet
Katherine Boldt
Research01 Oct 2015
Nature

Volume: 526, P: 100-103
Short- and long-term variability of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets

The different contributions of long-term and short-term variability to the evolution of ice sheets lead to substantial uncertainties in ice sheet models. This Review describes the response of ice sheets to oceanic, atmospheric and hydrological processes across a range of timescales.

Edward Hanna
Dániel Topál
Lizz Ultee
Reviews08 Feb 2024
Nature Reviews Earth & Environment

Volume: 5, P: 193-210
Bathymetry of the Antarctic continental shelf and ice shelf cavities from circumpolar gravity anomalies and other data

Raphaelle Charrassin
Romain Millan
Mirko Scheinert
ResearchOpen Access07 Jan 2025
Scientific Reports

Volume: 15, P: 1-10
The International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean Version 5.0

Martin Jakobsson
Rezwan Mohammad
Larry Mayer
ResearchOpen Access21 Dec 2024
Scientific Data

Volume: 11, P: 1-22
Mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017

Andrew Shepherd
Erik Ivins
Bert Wouters
Research13 Jun 2018
Nature

Volume: 558, P: 219-222
Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018

Three techniques for estimating mass losses from the Greenland Ice Sheet produce comparable results for the period 1992–2018 that approach the trajectory of the highest rates of sea-level rise projected by the IPCC.

Andrew Shepherd
Erik Ivins
Jan Wuite
Research10 Dec 2019
Nature

Volume: 579, P: 233-239
The foundations of the Patagonian icefields

The Southern Patagonian Icefield likely stores around 10% more ice than previously believed, according to ice thickness estimates based on remote sensing and direct measurement-informed mapping of the sub-glacial topography.

Johannes J. Fürst
David Farías-Barahona
Marius Schaefer
ResearchOpen Access22 Mar 2024
Communications Earth & Environment

Volume: 5, P: 1-10
The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean Version 2

Boris Dorschel
Laura Hehemann
Jan Erik Arndt
ResearchOpen Access07 Jun 2022
Scientific Data

Volume: 9, P: 1-13
The International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean Version 4.0

Martin Jakobsson
Larry A. Mayer
Karl B. Zinglersen
ResearchOpen Access09 Jul 2020
Scientific Data

Volume: 7, P: 1-14
Ice dynamics will remain a primary driver of Greenland ice sheet mass loss over the next century

Changes in ice dynamics in the Greenland Ice Sheet are projected to contribute to significantly more mass loss than previously thought, suggesting that proper calibration and accurate representation of ice-ocean interactions are critical.

Youngmin Choi
Mathieu Morlighem
Michael Wood
ResearchOpen Access04 Feb 2021
Communications Earth & Environment

Volume: 2, P: 1-9
Pathways of ocean heat towards Pine Island and Thwaites grounding lines

Yoshihiro Nakayama
Georgy Manucharyan
Dimitris Menemenlis
ResearchOpen Access22 Nov 2019
Scientific Reports

Volume: 9, P: 1-9

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