The immense East Antarctic ice sheet may be more vulnerable to rising temperatures in the Weddell Sea than previously thought.

Earlier studies have predicted that most of the ice lost from Antarctica as a result of global warming will be from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. To study the much larger ice sheet in East Antarctica, Nick Golledge at Victoria University of Wellington and his team used a three-dimensional ice-sheet model to simulate the way ice flow across the continent responds to a changing climate in various warming scenarios. They predict that most of the melting to affect East Antarctica will originate in the Recovery basin, thanks to the warming Weddell Sea, which abuts this basin.

Climate models suggest that by the end of the century, the eastern Weddell Sea could experience some of the highest increases in sea-surface temperature in Antarctica.

Geophys. Res. Lett. http://doi.org/bzsd (2017)