Antarctic ice has grown again – but this does not buck overall melt trend
A new study shows that after decades of rapid decline, the Antarctic ice sheet actually gained mass from 2021 to 2023. This is a reminder that climate change does not follow a smooth path but a jagged one, with many small ups and downs within a larger trend.
The research, published in the journal Science China Earth Sciences, showed that while the ice sheet lost an average of 142bn tonnes each year in the 2010s, in the 2021 to 2023 period it gained about 108bn tonnes of ice each year.
The study focused on four massive glacier basins and concluded that the increase in the early 2020s was caused by greater snowfall, particularly in eastern Antarctica. Extreme snowfall events, due to the warmer atmosphere holding more moisture, are an expected effect of climate change. But Antarctica has been losing ice since the 1980s, and it would take about 50 years of snowfall at the increased level to get back to previous levels.
More recent Nasa data suggests the snowfall trend observed in the report had disappeared by 2025, with precipitation dropping back to pre-2020 levels.
As the Chinese researchers note, the pattern of Antarctic ice loss is 'a critical climate warning signal'. The situation is complex, and the process of developing a full understanding continues.
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