In February 2022, Antarctic sea ice shrank to its smallest area since satellite records began in 1979, losing an expanse roughly three and a half times the size of the UK, and days later, East Antarctic weather stations recorded temperatures 40°C above normal. These events raise a critical question: are they freak occurrences, or a preview of Antarctica’s future? The answer matters because any loss of Antarctic ice mass raises global sea levels, threatening coastlines worldwide. Current climate models cannot reliably predict how Antarctic snowfall, clouds, and extreme weather will change over the coming century. SURFEIT aims to fix that. The team will improve how climate models represent polar clouds, use new and existing observations to refine snowfall predictions, and better link Earth and ice system models. This will allow scientists to forecast when Antarctic ice may fracture and how much sea levels could rise by 2100 and beyond. This is fundamental science with a direct practical endpoint. Better predictions of sea-level rise will help governments, insurers, and infrastructure planners decide where to build sea walls, how to manage coastal flooding, and how to protect ports and cities. Without this work, those decisions would be based on guesswork.
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Antarctica is changing. In February 2022, sea ice around Antarctica reached the lowest area that has been observed since satellite records began in 1979. This marks the first time that the area of sea ice ice has been observed to shrink below 2 million square kilometres. Compared to the average minimum, the 2022 February minimum is missing an area of sea ice that is about three and a half times the size of the UK. Directly following on from the sea ice minimum, in March 2022 record air temperatures were recorded across much of East Antarctica, with some meteorological stations observing temperatures 40C warmer than normal. These unprecedented conditions were associated with a very intense 'atmospheric river', a narrow corridor of warm water vapour, bringing warm air and moisture to the high Antarctic Plateau. We do not know whether these extreme regional climatic events are just 'one offs', and highly unlikely to occur again, or whether they are an indication of how Antarctic climate will develop in the future. These recent extreme weather events and conditions in Antarctica have prompted fresh concern about how climate change in this remote region will impact Earth. The protection of coastlines around the world from the future rise in sea level from Antarctica requires a better understanding of how the weather of Antarctica will evolve over the coming century. Any loss of Antarctic ice mass as a result of weather changes may raise the sea level around the globe. SURFEIT will thus investigate how changing snow and radiation, or surface fluxes, over the coming century will affect Antarctic snow and ice. The international SURFEIT team will: (i) improve how polar clouds are represented in our climate models; (ii) use pre-existing, and new, observations alongside climate model output to help improve our understanding of changes in snowfall over Antarctica; (iii) ensure we can accurately predict small-scale and extreme-event weather changes; and (iv) improve how we link our earth and ice system model components together, so that we can make better predictions of when Antarctic ice may fracture, and so raise global sea level. Our work on improving snowfall and ice predictions will help us answer our overarching question 'How will changes in Antarctic surface fluxes impact global sea-level to 2100 and beyond?'
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