Part Two / How our Planet is Changing

2.10 Ice Sheets, Shelves and Glaciers

All online sources accessed on

  1. 12.8 trillion tonnes of ice were lost Slater, T., et al., ‘Earth’s ice imbalance’, Cryosphere, 15 (1), 2021: 233–46, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-233-2021.

    even modest losses … can significantly increase the risk of flooding Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, ed. H.-O. Pörtner et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/.

  2. melt-elevation feedback could lead to sustained ice loss Fox-Kemper, B., et al., ‘Ocean, cryosphere and sea level change’, in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. V. Masson-Delmotte et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press), https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/.

    These get thinner … warmer ocean waters Winkelmann, R., et al., ‘The Antarctic ice sheet – a sleeping giant?’, Frontiers for Young Minds, 27 April 2022, https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2022.702643.

    These positive feedbacks are why both ice sheets Lenton, T. M., et al., ‘Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (6), 2008: 1786–93, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705414105; Armstrong McKay, D., et al., ‘Updated assessment suggests >1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple tipping points’ (in review), Earth and Space Science Open Archive, 23 December 2021, https://doi.org/10.1002/essoar.10509769.1.

    The risk … increases starkly when exceeding global warming of 1.5–2°C Armstrong McKay et al., ‘Updated assessment suggests >1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple tipping points’; Martin, M. A., et al., ‘Ten new insights in climate science 2021: a horizon scan’, Global Sustainability, 4, 2021: Article e25, https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2021.25.

    Even if temperatures eventually were to sink Robinson, A., Calov, R., and Ganopolski, A., ‘Multistability and critical thresholds of the Greenland ice sheet’, Nature Climate Change, 2 (6), 2012: 429–32, https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1449; Garbe, J. T., et al., ‘Hysteresis of the Antarctic ice sheet’, Nature, 585 (7826), 2020: 538–44, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2727-5.