Response of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet to past and future climate change.

The East Antarctic Ice Sheet contains the vast majority of Earth's glacier ice (about 52 metres sea-level equivalent), but is often viewed as less vulnerable to global warming than the West Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets. However, some regions of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet have lost mass over recent decades, prompting the need to re-evaluate its sensitivity to climate change. Here we review the response of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet to past warm periods, synthesize current observations of change and evaluate future projections.

A reconciled solution of Meltwater Pulse 1A sources using sea-level fingerprinting.

The most rapid global sea-level rise event of the last deglaciation, Meltwater Pulse 1A (MWP-1A), occurred ∼14,650 years ago. Considerable uncertainty regarding the sources of meltwater limits understanding of the relationship between MWP-1A and the concurrent fast-changing climate. Here we present a data-driven inversion approach, using a glacio-isostatic adjustment model to invert for the sources of MWP-1A via sea-level constraints from six geographically distributed sites.

Solid Earth change and the evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Recent studies suggest that Antarctica has the potential to contribute up to ~15 m of sea-level rise over the next few centuries. The evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is driven by a combination of climate forcing and non-climatic feedbacks. In this review we focus on feedbacks between the Antarctic Ice Sheet and the solid Earth, and the role of these feedbacks in shaping the response of the ice sheet to past and future climate changes.

Ice-sheet mass balance and climate change.

Since the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, new observations of ice-sheet mass balance and improved computer simulations of ice-sheet response to continuing climate change have been published. Whereas Greenland is losing ice mass at an increasing pace, current Antarctic ice loss is likely to be less than some recently published estimates. It remains unclear whether East Antarctica has been gaining or losing ice mass over the past 20 years, and uncertainties in ice-mass change for West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula remain large.

A reconciled estimate of ice-sheet mass balance.

We combined an ensemble of satellite altimetry, interferometry, and gravimetry data sets using common geographical regions, time intervals, and models of surface mass balance and glacial isostatic adjustment to estimate the mass balance of Earth's polar ice sheets. We find that there is good agreement between different satellite methods--especially in Greenland and West Antarctica--and that combining satellite data sets leads to greater certainty. Between 1992 and 2011, the ice sheets of Greenland, East Antarctica, West Antarctica, and the Antarctic Peninsula changed in mass by -142 ± 49, +14 ± 43, -65 ± 26, and -20 ± 14 gigatonnes year(-1), respectively.

Lower satellite-gravimetry estimates of Antarctic sea-level contribution.

Recent estimates of Antarctica's present-day rate of ice-mass contribution to changes in sea level range from 31 gigatonnes a year (Gt yr(-1); ref. 1) to 246 Gt yr(-1) (ref. 2), a range that cannot be reconciled within formal errors.