Scientists record massive ice gain in East Antarctica between 2021-2023
Washington: A warming pool of tropical ocean water has triggered immense snowstorms over East Antarctica, contributing to a net gain of 695 billion tons of ice between 2021 and 2023, the largest ice mass-gain event yet recorded by NASA’s GRACE satellites.
The tonnage is equivalent to about four years of annual ice loss based on a two-decade average.
Researchers found that sustained warming in the tropical warm pool where the Pacific Ocean meets the Indian Ocean triggered a Rossby wave train toward Queen Mary Land and Wilkes Land, reorganizing moisture transport and enhancing regional snowfall.
Water-vapor tracking showed moist air from the mid-latitude Indian Ocean was transported via atmospheric rivers — rivers of moisture in the atmosphere — resulting in persistent heavy snowfall over the region.
The study breaks from existing theories that attribute increased Antarctic snowfall to human-caused warming. The authors found only 9% of the observed snowfall anomaly was attributable to anthropogenic influence.”We found that this type of multiyear-TWP warming usually oscillates in the historical record,” associate professor and co-author Qinghua Ding said. “I believe it is not a CO2 favored pattern because global warming does not normally favor such fluctuations.”
Observations show similar sustained warming events occur approximately once per decade, suggesting the teleconnection pathway between the tropical warm pool and East Antarctica could recur, even as the continent loses ice decade-by-decade.
