Abstracted/indexed

An international effort that brought together more than 60 ice, oceanic and atmospheric scientists from 3 dozen international institutions has generated new estimates of how much of an impact Earth's melting ice sheets could have on global sea levels by 2100. If greenhouse gas emissions continue apace, Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets could together contribute more than 38 centimetres (15 inches) of global sea level rise – and that's beyond the amount that has already been set in motion by Earth's warming climate. These new results, published this week in a special issue of TC, come from the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project (ISMIP6) led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Read more.

Newly discovered deep seabed channels beneath Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica may be the pathway for warm ocean water to melt the underside of the ice. Data from two research missions, using aircraft and ship, are helping scientists to understand the contribution this huge and remote glacier is likely to make to future global sea level rise. Two research papers published today in TC describe the discovery.

The New Siberian Islands were the birthplace of the MOSAiC floe: the sea ice in which the research vessel Polarstern is now drifting through the Arctic was formed in December 2018 off the coast of the archipelago, which separates the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea to the north of Siberia. Please read the study that MOSAiC experts have published now in The Cryosphere, and which will provide the basis for numerous upcoming scientific assessments.