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The Antarctic ice sheet has gained mass — but probably not for long

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Since 2020, snowfall has largely counterbalanced the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet. The atmospheric effect that causes this has been identified — and it’s temporary.

By

  1. Jonathan Wille

    1. Jonathan Wille is at the French National Centre for Scientific Research/Biogeosciences, University of Burgundy Europe, Dijon 21000, France.

With record-breaking heatwaves, wildfires, a super El Niño and dwindling Arctic sea ice dominating the headlines, it might come as a surprise that loss of mass from the Antarctic ice sheet has essentially been on pause since about 2020. Writing in Nature, Wang et al.1 report that the cause is an atmospheric phenomenon that links warm seas in the Indian and Pacific Oceans with enhanced snowfall in Antarctica, counterbalancing ice mass lost to melting. Importantly, the authors found that the anomalous sea temperatures that are responsible for this trend occur roughly once every decade, so the Antarctic ice sheet looks set to return to losing mass in the next few years.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-02376-w

References

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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