Antarctic meltwater alters future projections of climate and sea level

Shaina Sadai (), Ambarish V. Karmalkar, David Pollard, Yue Dong, Erica Lucas, Natalya Gomez, Robert DeConto and Alan Condron ()
Additional contact information
Shaina Sadai: Five College Associate
Ambarish V. Karmalkar: University of Rhode Island
David Pollard: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Yue Dong: University of California Los Angeles
Erica Lucas: McGill University
Natalya Gomez: McGill University
Robert DeConto: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Alan Condron: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Imperfect understanding of ice sheet-climate interactions poses challenges for projecting the impacts of ice sheet mass loss on future climate and sea level. Here we couple a dynamic Antarctic ice sheet model and global climate model to simulate ice sheet-climate interactions. In our single-model, single-member modeling framework, we find sea level and climate projections are significantly modified from uncoupled simulations neglecting Antarctic meltwater under RCP8.5 and RCP4.5. Antarctic meltwater yields surface air temperatures up to 1.5 °C higher in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, while broadly dampening temperature rise in the Southern Hemisphere. Due to radiative feedback changes, both emissions scenarios have global mean surface temperature warming ~0.3 °C lower in the coupled scenario than the control by 2100, with a maximum anomaly of ~1 °C at 2200 under RCP8.5. This slows Antarctica’s contribution to global mean sea level rise. Total Antarctic sea level contributions under RCP8.5 (2100: ~0.3 m, 2200: >3 m) include substantial contributions from East Antarctica, though not under RCP4.5 (2100: ~0.1 m, 2200: >1 m). Regionally, projected sea level is up to 0.9 m higher in the Pacific than the global mean Antarctic contribution under RCP8.5 at 2200.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64438-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-64438-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-64438-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().