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‘It looks more likely with each day we burn fossil fuels’: polar scientist on Antarctic tipping points

  Despite working on polar science for the British Antarctic Survey for 20 years, Louise Sime finds the magnitude of potential sea-level rise hard to comprehend. Up until 2016, the sea ice
in Antarctica seemed relatively stable. Then everything started to change.
At first, the decline was mostly in line with climate models.

But suddenly, in 2023, there was an enormous drop. About 2.5 million sq km of Antarctic
sea ice went missing relative to the average before 2023. The anomaly was
of such a magnitude that it’s quite hard for scientists to know what to
make of it. It has been described as a five sigma event.

The potential for Antarctica to increase global sea levels is scarier than for Greenland.
Right now, they’re both contributing similar amounts to sea-level rise,
but in future, it could be Greenland goes up a bit and then Antarctica goes
up catastrophically. Greenland has the potential to raise sea levels by
five or six metres, but we don’t expect this will come in the form of an
absolutely catastrophic, abrupt loss. Most of the ice in Greenland is not
below sea level so we can see what is happening and we expect it will melt
in a linear fashion.

By contrast, Antarctica has 80 metres of potential
sea-level rise. We don’t expect all of that, but it is harder to know
exactly what is happening.

 Guardian 27th June 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2025/jun/27/tipping-points-antarctica-arctic-sea-ice-polar-scientist

June 29, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | ANTARCTICA, climate change