A coupled climate and ice-sheet model found that snowfall and clouds could substantially limit East Antarctic ice loss under sustained warming. The 100,000-year simulations yielded much greater losses in West Antarctica. The regional contrast depends on atmospheric feedbacks and model assumptions; it describes a long-term response rather than a timetable for this century.
At South Korea's Institute for Basic Science, researchers Axel Timmermann and Kyung-Sook Yun examined persistent warming with a model linking polar ice sheets, the atmosphere and the ocean. Their peer-reviewed Nature Climate Change study uses simulations spanning 100,000 years under fixed carbon dioxide concentrations. It examines the long-term states approached by the ice sheets, rather than a detailed schedule for the coming century.[1]
In the model, warming above 2 °C relative to pre-industrial conditions brings major West Antarctic ice losses over millennia. East Antarctica remains more resilient even at 10 °C or more. A southward shift in the westerlies carries moisture toward Antarctica. Snow accumulates over the high interior, while increased cloud cover reduces incoming sunlight. Greenland's modeled threshold is approximately 6 °C.[1]
Those temperatures depend on the model configuration and are not universal safety limits established by observations. Processes beneath ice shelves are represented approximately, and the model's information-exchange intervals do not isolate short-lived responses. Other model configurations have generated greater East Antarctic losses. The result concerns atmospheric feedbacks in long-term ice calculations, alongside continuing ice loss and sea-level rise.[1]
