Antarctica tipping points
This article has been republished from The Conversation under Creative Commons licence CC BY-ND 4.0 and is written by Timothy Naish, Professor in Earth Sciences, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington. It was originally titled Antarctic tipping points: the irreversible changes to come if we fail to keep warming below 2℃.
The slow-down of the Southern Ocean circulation, a dramatic drop in the extent of sea ice and unprecedented heatwaves are all raising concerns that Antarctica may be approaching tipping points.
Emperor penguin colony
An emperor penguin colony on Snow Hill Island, the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula.
Emperor penguins need sea ice to breed. In 2023, it was reported that in four out of five breeding sites in one region of sea ice loss, no chicks survived.
The world has now warmed by 1.2℃ above pre-industrial levels (defined as the average temperature between 1805 and 1900) and has experienced 20 cm of global sea-level rise.
Significantly higher sea-level rise and more frequent extreme climate events will happen if we overshoot the Paris Agreement target to keep warming well below 2℃. Currently, we are on track to average global warming of 3-4℃ by 2100.
Once again, as a result of unusually low sea ice conditions at both poles (especially in the Antarctic), global ice extent is currently the lowest on record for the time of year... + More graphical perspectives of the satellite-era at: https://t.co/ecHYax1KfT pic.twitter.com/qOjPajmwVO
— Zack Labe (@ZLabe) June 12, 2023
While the recent Antarctic extremes are not necessarily tipping points, ongoing warming will accelerate ice loss and ocean warming, pushing Antarctica towards thresholds which, once crossed, would lead to irreversible changes – with global long-term, multi-generational repercussions and major consequences for people and the environment.
The Earth system is designed to reach equilibrium (come into balance) in response to climate heating, but the last time atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) were as high as they are today (423 ppm) was three million years ago.
It took a millennium for the world’s climate to adjust to this. When it did, Earth’s surface was 2°C warmer and global sea-levels were 20 m higher due to Antarctic ice-sheet melting. Back then, even our earliest human ancestors were yet to evolve.
The evolution of humankind could only begin after CO₂ levels dropped below 300 ppm, about 2.7 million years ago. Since then, Earth’s average temperature has fluctuated between 10℃ during ice ages and 14°C during warmer interglacial periods.
During the past 10,000 years of our present interglacial period, Earth’s greenhouse gas thermostat has been set at 300 ppm of CO₂, maintaining a pleasant average temperature of 14°C. A goldilocks climate – not too hot, not too cold – but just right for human civilisation to flourish.
Impact of warming on Antarctic
Ongoing warming will speed up ice loss and ocean warming, pushing Antarctica towards thresholds of irreversible change.
The Earth system is interconnected
Curren t global heating is taking the Earth system across a threshold humans have never experienced, into a climate where Antarctica’s ice shelves and marine ice sheets can no longer exist and one billion people, currently living near the coast, will be drowned by rising seas.
This will be a world where wildfires, heatwaves, atmospheric rivers, extreme rainfalls and droughts – such as those we have seen globally last summer – become commonplace.
The Earth system (oceans, atmosphere, cryosphere, ecosystems etc.) is interconnected. This allows energy flow, enabling physical and ecological systems to remain in balance, or to regain balance. But connections can also mean dependencies, leading to reactions, amplifying feedbacks and consequences. Changes have roll-on effects, much like toppling dominoes.
Cascade effects from climate change
This shows how unabated climate change sets off a cascade of effects that result in more severe consequences and impacts, some of which will be irreversible over many generations into the future.
Download a PDF of this infographic here.
We take a 50-year view into the future, as this is relevant for today’s policy makers but also sets in place much longer multi-generational consequences. While we focu s on this example, there are many other Antarctic tipping points, including the effects of freshwater from ice-sheet melt on marine ecosystems and the effects of Antarctic change on Aotearoa’s temperature and rainfall patterns.
Antarctica in a warming world
Unless we change our current emissions trajectory , this is what to expect.
By 2070, the climate over Antarctica (Te Tiri o te Moana) will warm by more than 3℃ above pre-industrial temperatures. The Southern Ocean (Te Moana-tāpokopoko-a-Tāwhaki) will be 2℃ warmer.
As a consequence, more than 45% of summer sea ice will be lost, causing the surface ocean and atmosphere over Antarctica to warm even faster as dark ocean replaces white sea ice, absorbing more solar radiation and re-emitting it as heat. This allows warm, moist air in atmospheric rivers from the tropics to penetrate further south.
This accelerated warming of the Antarctic climate is a phenomenon known as polar amplification. This is already happening in the Arctic, which is warming two to three times faster than the global average of 1.2℃, with dramatic consequences for the permanent loss of sea ice and melting of Greenland’s ice sheet.
“We basically are saying that it has become too late to save the Arctic summer sea ice,” said Dirk Notz, an author of the study https://t.co/t9Oty6oCVf via @business
— NaomiOreskes (@NaomiOreskes) June 7, 2023
Antarctic tipping points
The warmed waters melt the ice shelves, which are floating tongues of ice that stabilise the Antarctic ice sheet, slowing down the flow of ice into the ocean.
Ice shelves can pass a tipping point when local ocean temperature thresholds are crossed, causing them to thin and float in places where they were once held in place by contact with the seabed. Melting at the surface also weakens ice shelves. In some cases, water on the surface fills up cracks in the ice and can then cause large areas to disintegrate catastrophically.
By 2070, heat in the ocean and atmosphere will have caused many ice shelves to break up into icebergs that will melt and release a quarter of their volume into the ocean as freshwater. By 2100, 50% of ice shelves will be gone. By 2150, all will have melted.
Without ice shelves holding back the ice sheet, glaciers will discharge at an even faster rate under gravity into the ocean. Large parts of the East Antarctic ice sheet and almost the entire West Antarctic ice sheet sit on rock in deep depressions below sea level.
They are vulnerable to an irreversible process called marine ice sheet instability (MISI). As the edges of the ice retreat into the deep basins, driven by the ongoing encroachment of warm ocean waters, the loss of ice becomes self-sustaining at an accelerating rate until it is all gone.
Another positive feedback, called marine ice cliff instability (MICI), means cliffs at the margins of the retreating ice sheet become unstable and topple over, exposing even taller cliffs that collapse under their own weight continuously like dominoes.
If global heating is not held below 2℃, ice-sheet models show global sea-levels will rise at an accelerating rate up to 3 m per century. Future generations will be committed to unstoppable retreat of the Greenland and marine sections of the Antarctic ice sheets, causing as much as 24 m of global sea-level rise.
Antarctica's ice sheets
Parts of Antarctica’s ice sheet are grounded below sea level and are vulnerable to unstoppable retreat, once certain thresholds are crossed.
These changes highlight the urgency for immediate and deep cuts to emissions. Antarctica has to remain a stable ice-covered continent to avoid the worst impacts of rising seas.
Programmes around the world, including the Antarctic Science Platform, are prioritising research about future changes to the Antarctic ice sheet. Even if the news is not great, there is still time to act.
Related content
Climate change resources – planning pathways provides pedagogical advice and curriculum links to help educators with their planning. It includes an interactive that groups Hubs resources according to key teaching topics. The article Thin Ice in the classroom introduces the film Thin Ice – The Inside Story of Climate Science, which looks at our planet’s changing climate, and suggests a range of Science Learning Hub resources designed to support its use in the classroom.
Climate change – a wicked problem for classroom inquiry provides pedagogical suggestions on ways to approach this issue in ways that help to avoid overwhelming students.
See our climate change collection – full of annotated resources to unpack the science of climate change and associated socio-scientific issues.
See The Conversation article Ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica predicted to bring more frequent extreme weather from 2019.
Learn more in the Hub articles Antarctica and global climate change and Climate change, melting ice and sea level rise.
The 2017 Connected article Rising seas describes how scientists investigate what is happening with sea levels and use evidence to suggest how we might adapt to the changes.
Activity ideas
Climate change – challenging conversations uses concept cartoons designed to to support student discussions with whānau and/or others.
Investigating sea level rise uses simple models to demonstrate the differing impacts of melting land ice and sea ice on sea level rise.
Useful links
Find out more about some of the research mentioned in this article:
Gunn, K.L., Rintoul, S.R., England, M.H. et al. Recent reduced abyssal overturning and ventilation in the Australian Antarctic Basin. Nature Climate Change. 13, 537–544 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01667-8.
Turner, J., Holmes C,. et al. Record Low Antarctic Sea Ice Cover in February 2022. Geophysical Research Letters. Vol 49, Issue 12, (2022). https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL098904.
Wille, J. and the East Antarctica heatwave project: The extraordinary March 2022 East Antarctica heatwave, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-8107, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-8107, 2023.
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR6 Synthesis Report, Climate Change 2023.
Masson-Delmotte, V., Masson-Delmotte, V., M., et al. Chapter 5 Information from Paleoclimate Archives 2013: Information from Paleoclimate Archives. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Grant, G.R., Naish, T.R., Dunbar, G.B. et al. The amplitude and origin of sea-level variability during the Pliocene epoch. Nature 574, 237–241 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1619-z.
Brad Pillans, Tim Naish. Defining the Quaternary, Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol 23, Issues 23–24, 2004, Pages 2271-2282, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2004.07.006.
David I. Armstrong McKay, et al., Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points. Science 377, eabn 7950 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn7950
Rintoul, S.R., Chown, S.L., DeConto, R.M. et al. Choosing the future of Antarctica. Nature 558, 233–241 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0173-4.
Frank Pattyn, Mathieu Morlighem, The uncertain future of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Science 367, 1331-1335 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaz5487.
DeConto, R.M., Pollard, D., Alley, R.B. et al. The Paris Climate Agreement and future sea-level rise from Antarctica. Nature 593, 83–89 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03427-0.
The research mentioned in the tweets:
Global: Sea-Ice Concentration/Extent/Thickness graphs and data.
Bloomberg article The Arctic Will Have Ice-Free Summers as Soon as the 2030s, 7 June 2023.
The Conversation articles:
Acknowledgement
This article was written by Timothy Naish, Professor in Earth Sciences, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington. The article was originally published in The Conversation, 14 June 2023. Read the original article.
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