Atmospheric Rivers Shaping Antarctica’s Uncertain Future

March 3, 2026

The paper entitled “Antarctica’s uncertain future: sea-level rise from oceanic and atmospheric forcing, with a focus on atmospheric rivers” was recently published in Frontiers in Earth Science. The study was led by a multidisciplinary team of scientists, including Xun Zou, F. Martin Ralph, David H. Bromwich, Sarah T. Gille, Irina V. Gorodetskaya, Matthew R. Mazloff, Dan Lubin, Ivana Cerovečki, Rui Sun, Jonathan D. Wille and Zhenhai Zhang. This work supports CW3E’s Strategic Plan (Atmospheric Rivers and Extreme Precipitation Research, Prediction, and Applications) and strengthens AR research in Antarctica.

Antarctic land ice stores most of Earth’s freshwater and remains a major source of uncertainty in future global sea-level rise. Although ocean-driven basal melting currently dominates ice loss, atmospheric forcing may play an increasingly important role, particularly as extreme weather events intensify. Atmospheric rivers (ARs), key pathways for long-distance moisture transport, introduce substantial uncertainty to Antarctica’s ice mass balance because they can drive both heavy snowfall and surface melting. ARs also influence ocean stratification and mixed-layer depth through freshwater input, thereby affecting air-sea exchange. Interactions among the atmosphere, ocean, and ice sheet remain incompletely represented in global climate models and observations. This perspective evaluates Antarctica’s future by highlighting uncertainties in atmospheric and oceanic forcings—especially ARs—and their implications for projecting sea-level rise hazards.

Understanding the global coastal impacts of Antarctic ice mass change involves examining the complex interplay between different Earth system components (Fig. 1), emphasizing the need for the communication across diverse fields—meteorology, oceanography, glaciology, and groundwater hydrology—via promotion of collaboration, prioritization of critical research requirements, and exploration of opportunities for seed funding. International efforts to expand the focus on meteorological drivers, especially ARs, in remote regions like Antarctica will further advance SLR research and support effective climate change mitigation strategies for coastal regions.

Figure 1. Drivers of Antarctic ice mass balance, especially for Atmospheric Rivers (ARs), and their contribution to global sea level rise (SLR). (a) Schematic illustrating the physical mechanisms that regulate Antarctic ice mass balance (adapted from Dr. Helen Fricker’s figure: https://elindarelius.no/2017/09/04/why-is-the-antarctic-ice-sheet-melting/; (b) schematic illustrating the contributions of different Earth system components to global SLR. Figure 2 from Zou et al. (2026).

Citation:

Zou, X., Ralph, F. M., Bromwich, D. H., Gille, S. T., Gorodetskaya, I. V., Mazloff, M. R., Lubin, D., Cerovečki, I., Sun, R., Wille, J. D., & Zhang, Z. (2026). Antarctica’s uncertain future: global sea-level rise from oceanic and atmospheric forcing, with a focus on atmospheric rivers. Frontiers in Earth Science, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2026.1761959