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Observations of grounding zones are the missing key to understand ice melt in Antarctica

Nature Climate Change volume 13, pages 1010–1013 (2023)Cite this article

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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.

Under globally warming conditions, the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are spewing hundreds of billions of tons of ice into the oceans that are not renewed by accumulation of snowfall on land, with the prospect that sea level will rise more than 1 m by the end of the century1. Current models struggle to reproduce rapid rates of sea-level rise that occurred during past warm periods, and produce simulations of ice loss that are too low for the recent historical period2,3. Most projections produce sea-level rise estimates that are likely to be too conservative.

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Fig. 1: Observations of ice-shelf cavities required to understand ice melt.
Fig. 2: Getz Ice Shelf in West Antarctica, photographed by NASA Operation IceBridge in 2018.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth System Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Eric Rignot

  2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Eric Rignot

  3. Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Eric Rignot

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  1. Eric Rignot
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Correspondence to Eric Rignot.

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Rignot, E. Observations of grounding zones are the missing key to understand ice melt in Antarctica. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 1010–1013 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01819-w

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