Though numerical models and popular films like An Inconvenient Truth projected Arctic ice collapse due to global warming and then climate change, the reverse was true in the real world. Ice expanded. That changed in 2015 and a new model estimates why. The authors say the Southern Ocean which surrounds Antarctica has gotten warmer, bringing salty water from the deep up to the surface.

Those water changes led to record-breaking lows in 2023, which could destabilize the world’s ocean current systems, and it will be due to three changes.

In 2013, they write stronger winds led to salty Circumpolar Deep Water getting closer to the surface.

In 2015, those higher winds caused higher heat on the surface layer, rapidly melting sea ice in East Antarctica.

Since 2018, a cycle has repeated where, with less ice to melt, the surface remains salty and warm, inhibiting new ice from forming.

East and West Antarctica show different ice changes, with West Antarctica having heat trapped by cloud cover in 2016 and 2019 while East Antarctic warming was almost entirely ocean-driven.



If it is not a cycle and continues the Southern Ocean could be pushed into a "prolonged low sea-ice state,” they write, becoming their own driver of climate change.

The good news is that western countries like the U.S. emit fewer emissions per capita than 100 years ago. The bad news is that China creates more pollution than every other country in the top 10 combined. The world does not need for China to make more solar panels and increase costs for electricity, it simply needs to stop building two new coal plants per week.

Citation: https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/11715/