Mass changes across the Antarctic ice sheet have been detected using satellite gravimetry, revealing significant instabilities in major glacier basins of East Antarctica as well as across the entire ice sheet.
The Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) plays a major role in global sea-level rise. Since March 2002, the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) mission and its successor, GRACE-FO (GRACE Follow-On), have provided valuable data to monitor changes in ice mass across the AIS.
Previous studies have consistently shown a long-term trend of mass loss, particularly in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, while glaciers in East Antarctica appeared relatively stable. However, a recent study led by Dr. Wang and Prof. Shen at Tongji University has found a surprising shift: between 2021 and 2023, the AIS experienced a record-breaking increase in overall mass.
Notably, four major glaciers in the Wilkes Land–Queen Mary Land region of East Antarctica reversed their previous pattern of accelerated mass loss from 2011 to 2020 and instead showed significant mass gain during the 2021 to 2023 period.
Record-breaking mass gain over the Antarctic Ice Sheet
From 2002 to 2010, the AIS has experienced a mass loss with a change rate of –73.79±56.27 Gt/yr, which nearly doubled to –142.06±56.12 Gt/yr for the period 2011–2020. This accelerated mass loss was primarily related to intensified mass depletion in West Antarctica and the WL-QML region of East Antarctica. However, a significant reversal occurred thereafter, driven by anomalous precipitation accumulation, the AIS gained mass at a rate of 107.79±74.90 Gt/yr between 2021 and 2023.
Correspondingly, the contribution of mass change over the AIS to global mean sea level rise was 0.20±0.16 mm/yr during 2002–2010 and 0.39±0.15 mm/yr during 2011–2020. In contrast, during 2021–2023, it exerted a negative contribution, offsetting global mean sea level rise at a rate of 0.30±0.21 mm/yr.
Enhanced mass loss of the Totten, Moscow, Denman, and Vincennes Bay glacier basins, East Antarctica
The four key glacier basins in WL-QML region, i.e., Totten, Moscow University, Denman, and Vincennes Bay, exhibited mass loss intensification with a rate of 47.64±8.14 Gt/yr during 2011-2020, compared to 2002-2010, with the loss area expanding inland. The researchers explained “this accelerated mass loss was primarily driven by two factors: surface mass reduction (contributing 72.53%) and increased ice discharge (27.47%).”
Notably, the complete disintegration of these four glaciers could potentially trigger a global mean sea level rise exceeding 7 meters. Their pronounced ablation patterns already constitute a critical climate warning signal, warranting greater scientific attention to their stability.
Reference: “Spatiotemporal mass change rate analysis from 2002 to 2023 over the Antarctic Ice Sheet and four glacier basins in Wilkes-Queen Mary Land” by Wei Wang, Yunzhong Shen, Qiujie Chen, Fengwei Wang and Yangkang Yu, 19 March 2025, Science China Earth Sciences.
DOI: 10.1007/s11430-024-1517-1
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31 Comments
See? And it all happened WITHOUT the harebrained geo-engineering scheme you were posting about in another article just hours ago.
See? This was caused by the Hunga Tonga volcano and proves we can save the ice caps with stratospheric injections of SO2.
Funny you seem to think it just magically reversed for no reason. 😂
What makes you think a rising water level behind a dam with the big crack in it is a good thing? Marine ice sheet instability can throw ice into the sea a million times faster than snow can fall out of the sky
China, like you can trust that source
Nasa has also confirmed it to be true on their website
Not one climate prediction has come true in my whole life . When I was a kid we were going to freeze to death “global cooling” by 1990 we were going to burn up..” global warming.” they couldn’t get it right so they went with the obvious… Climate change. TRUE.. it has always been changing and always will .. if the seas were rising Florida, southern Louisiana, Manhattan would be gone .. the earth is trying to fix its self the cold and ice are the abnormal… It gets huge set backs from weather valcanic eruptions, mt St Helens cooled the earth a bit .. the artic is mostly floating ice it is already in the ocean it isn’t going to make it rise. You can put ice in a cup ,fill it with ice first and water and forget about it , not even taking a drink. The ice will melt and not run over the cup, but do the reverse ice last and it will run over the cup, no space for it.. the antarctic will raise it some mostly land based, there’s no room for it’s ice melt , but will take hundreds of years to flood lands, because it stays in mostly sub freezing weather. The article melts more, because it always has a bit of a summer and the smaller it gets the faster it will melt..
There were a couple of articles about global cooling, but it was never the consensus that we were heading towards another ice age.
Next, most ice from Antarctica is attached to land, so much of the melting will cause sea level rise. Put a 16 inch tall block of ice in a 8 inch tall cup. Full the cup with water. As the ice melts, even though it was in the cup first, it will cause the cup to overflow.
No doubt the ice is already bigger than the glass… Makes sense.. it isn’t a good point . And yes there where need coverage about climate cooling and I believe Leonard nemoy did a episode about climate of cooling on his PBS show…and my freshman year in college 1985 I had a professor talk about it all the time . He was from Wisconsin and talk about how he believed every winter was getting worse
Your forgetting Greenland. 2nd largest ice sheet in the world.
If all Greenland ice melted it would cause a 7 meter rise in ocean sea levels.
Algie on melting ice caps absorbs heat instead of clean ice reflecting heat back into the atmosphere. This excellerates ice cap melting.
In the end the earth is returning to what it was… It is fixing itself , but the earth always through history has hiccups and sets it back .. very volatile at times and will be againb. I actually think it is fixing sadly, to go through a volatile time now. Little shack ups rumbles all the time ..
Or USA corporations, right !
Can this be pinned to the decrease in carbon emissions during the pandemic?
“…, a long-term trend of mass loss, particularly in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, while glaciers in East Antarctica appeared relatively stable.”
In other words, almost all of the loss has been in West Antarctica and very little in East Antarctica. Tell it like it is without trying to put a spin on it.
Abrupt changes argue against the slow accumulation of CO2 being responsible for ice coverage and suggest episodic forcing such as from submarine volcanoes and spreading centers associated with the well-known Pacific Ring of Fire.
Abrupt changes in long term trends show that something happened. It doesn’t show, indicate or even support the idea that the long term trend is driven by the same thing that causes a sudden reversal.
Hunga Tonga volcano in 2021 gave us a demonstration of the impact of stratospheric SO2 to preserve the ice caps. It blocked a lot of sunlight in the southern hemisphere and we can now see in actual results how significant the impact was.
CO2 is very simply insulation that blocks heat from radiating back into space. A simple infrared camera looking through a cardboard tube at a candle will no longer see the flame if you blow CO2 into the tube. That proves the impact on radiative cooling and CO2 levels are rising. That isn’t a secret.
“It doesn’t show, indicate or even support the idea that the long term trend is driven by the same thing that causes a sudden reversal.”
In the spirit of T. C. Chamberlain’s ‘Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses,’ unless you can demonstrate that it is impossible, it is something that should be considered. However, the point is, the global temperature graph looks like a saw-tooth, with episodic warming steps (El Nino events) followed by a noisy hiatus. Seasonal atmospheric CO2 is also higher during El Nino events! A not unreasonable hypothesis is that unobserved submarine volcanoes (NOT venting to the surface as Hunga Tonga did) are supplying local points of heating on the ocean bottom as well as possible increases out-gassing, albeit it is more likely the warmer temperatures are driving increased biogenic CO2 production.
Your argument about Hunga Tonga is a counter argument. The most recent El Nino has created the highest ever temperature spike; interestingly, it is also wider than typical for recent decades, suggesting a warming influence.
“A simple infrared camera looking through a cardboard tube at a candle will no longer see the flame if you blow CO2 into the tube.”
That is a qualitative argument that may or may not be relevant to the larger question of whether anthropogenic CO2 is driving the changes we are measuring. There needs to be numbers attached. It is generally acknowledged that the GCMs are all running too warm (save the Russian model). The question isn’t if the pole vaulter can compete, but whether they can make it over the bar. Numbers matter.
CO2 has nothing to do with climate change on earth
Anybody with a scientific mind would have looked at the Vostok ice core samples from the 1970s
Clearly, showing warming happens prior to the CO2 rise
We all know now, the CO2 as a pollutant was a means to squelch our energy based on petroleum
And to steal money like the green bad deal
It’s time to audit the green new deal scam
Audit, all the NGOs that took government money for the last five years
It’s pretty clear that it’s not getting hotter, so funny in Phoenix they now say the most consecutive days over 100
They can no longer say the hottest !they’re always changing the goal post
By the way, they did move the temperature standards to sky near sky harbor airport,
A no no for any reliable test .
They also move the standard at Death Valley and in many places on earth, they added temperature gauges where they had none before so bogus
Face it worse than global heating is global cooling
And it actually started 10 years ago. We can see by the data.
Crop failures in northern Europe are increasing.
The left wanting to scam us so much and steal our money cannot squelch the false narrative anymore, and real the information data is out.
We’ve been in global cooling spring is reduced and winter and summers are longer and cooler
I have wondered that myself… Something tells me co2 should cool the earth like the blankets of ash and dabree have during the huge volcanic eruptions. It all is a little strange.. the California fires are so bad they cover the earth with tons of ash sutt and CO2.. that smoke covers huge areas of the earth ..
Fascinating. So ice is lost in west Antarctica and glaciers rampage into the Southern Ocean to flood prime beach-front Real Estate in California, whilst East Antarctic groans and creaks under increased growth of ice, sinking isostatically yet deeper into the Earth’s crust…………
Ho hum………….
I was wondering about crustal rebound due to a significant increase in mass on one pole. Would it account for increased natural disasters and the rapid change in the magnetic north? For example, when does the gyroscope finally start to wobble when the bottom moves faster than the top?
-“driven by anomalous precipitation”
” thank goodness my house fell over so the flames aren’t so high!”
We’ve known this for sometime that it was a lie about the ice in Antarctica disappearing.
The only difference now is the left and their media are not able to lie and suppresses as much now. We’ve known the whole hoax of climate change getting hotter global warming CO2 the culprit was a lie to suppress our petroleum based energy. And steal money..
(See Vostok ice core samples 1970s)
Has anyone noticed it’s actually getting colder? Essentially here in California. We’ve had a couple few years now we’re seems like there is no spring just a longer winner and then summer.?
By the way, we should be very worried about cooler temperatures as you can’t grow food and will have 2 miles high ice over the East Coast.
Also, the record temperature like in Phoenix has not been beat for sometime as they scream,instead now they say record amount of days over 100 not the highest temperature ha!
By the way, they moved the historic temperature gauges in Phoenix, a decade ago to near sky Harbor, also, they move the temperature gauge in death Valley, interesting in the middle of test you change where you’re getting your data so bogus.
Anyway, it’s time now to audit the green new deal, where exactly did all that money went specifically in all the NGOs.
Not one climate prediction has come true in my whole life . When I was a kid we were going to freeze to death “global cooling” by 1990 we were going to burn up..” global warming.” they couldn’t get it right so they went with the obvious… Climate change. TRUE.. it has always been changing and always will .. if the seas were rising Florida, southern Louisiana, Manhattan would be gone .. the earth is trying to fix its self the cold and ice are the abnormal… It gets huge set backs from weather valcanic eruptions, mt St Helens cooled the earth a bit .. the artic is mostly floating ice it is already in the ocean it isn’t going to make it rise. You can put ice in a cup ,fill it with ice first and water and forget about it , not even taking a drink. The ice will melt and not run over the cup, but do the reverse ice last and it will run over the cup, no space for it.. the antarctic will raise it some mostly land based, there’s no room for it’s ice melt , but will take hundreds of years to flood lands, because it stays in mostly sub freezing weather. The article melts more, because it always has a bit of a summer and the smaller it gets the faster it will melt..
The earth might slip a smidge on its axis and change the totally everything we think or a huge volcanic eruption.. which both happens and will happen again.. slipped on its axis early 2000s. which is when some of this started… By my friends not to be ugly to anyone.. I myself love this planet . I recycle I do community clean up days.. I never see any huge political partysc out in groves doing any of this.. a lot of bull crap out of their mouths not a lot of action… Keep it clean…
And also this government,either party really care about anyone.. there would be no alcohol sold , cigarettes, pot, vapping, gambling. It all ruins life, but a lot of money and taxes being made. The beer family Busch helped in ending prohibition by showing the government how much taxes were being lost… And the ice has been melting once again for like 20 thousand years…. The antarctic has been freezing cold for 70 years.. so it can’t not melt much temp is 99 percent of the time it is below freezing..
Back to the fact the sea has been rising for 20 thousand years and has yet recovered Florida Manhattan or Louisiana… The used to not exist covered by water..
Well isn’t that amazing. Can we all say cycle. The same thing the earth has been doing for millions of years. It’s all been lies that people have gotten very rich off.
Ocean currents aren’t talked about enought in these comments, on there how they affect, or what the long-term affect on future climate.
Fresh water is slowing down the streams that carry cold water from the artic around the Atlantic, inturn heating it up causing larger hurricanes. If those streams stop altogether concentrating in the arctic circle it is predicted they can cause super cell cold snaps that travel at ectream speeds and could cause a mini ice age that would cover England and most of Europe.
I have wondered that myself… Something tells me co2 should cool the earth like the blankets of ash and dabree have during the huge volcanic eruptions. It all is a little strange.. the California fires are so bad they cover the earth with tons of ash sutt and CO2.. that smoke covers huge areas of the earth ..
The only sure conclusion I can draw from these studies and theories is that we are all going to die at some point. Everything else is debatable
You will not be allowed to die until you pay your taxes. 🙂