Drivers of change: climate and ocean
These pages provide information on some key drivers of change in global ice sheets and glaciers. See also: Southern Westerly Winds Circumpolar Deep Water
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Climate change
The Changing Antarctic Peninsula
How is climate change affecting the Antarctic Peninsula? And how will the Antarctic Peninsula change under future climate? These questions are tackled in Davies et al. 2026, which analyses climate model outputs for three scenarios: SSPs 1-2.6, SSP3-7.0 and SSP 5-8.5. These reflect a sustainable future, a medium-high emissions future and a high emissions future
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Why are glaciers important?
Glaciers are important for their beauty, cultural importance, ecosystem services such as water resources, economic value, and potential to raise global sea levels. This is an impassioned plea to recognise the value of our glaciers worldwide, and to protect them to the best of our ability. Globally shrinking glaciers Glaciers exist in pretty well every
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Climate change and future glacial resources
Glaciated regions present a wide range of glacial resources, from drinking water to tourism and from hydroelectric power to mining. However, as the climate warms and glacial regions change, these resources are under threat, and communities will need to start adapting in order to maintain livelihoods and economic development. Glacial water resources The first of
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Climate change and the world’s three poles (Video)
In 2022, the Royal Meteorological Society hosted an online event that explored the impact of climate change at the world’s three poles: the Arctic, the Antarctic and the Himalaya, in partnership with the Grantham Institute. Watch the online event here: Abstract Climate change is having rapid and dramatic impacts on glacier ice and snow at
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What does COP26 mean for global glacier and ice sheet change?
Earth’s glaciers are shrinking at an alarming rate. Each year they are losing more mass than is being replenished in each accumulation season.28 trillion tonnes of ice was lost from 1994 to 2017, and rates have risen by 57% since the 1990s. At present, global ice volume is shrinking at a rate of 267±16 Gt/year,
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UK Climate change ArcGIS stories
This Storymap series produced by esri UK and the Met Office explores the impact that modern-day climate change will have on the UK. The series investigates six key areas where climate change will cause the most disruption, which includes fire, flooding, agriculture, transport, energy, and health. When studying the effects of climate change in glaciated
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Choosing the future of Antarctica
In a new article in the journal Nature, Stephen Rintoul and colleagues present two very different visions of Antarctica’s future, from the perspective of an observer looking back from 2070. In one vision, humanity continues to exploit Earth’s natural resources (such as fossils fuels) and does little to protect the environment, and in the other,
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Glacier response to climate change
Climate change on the Antarctic Peninsula | Glacier fluctuations on James Ross Island | Glacier modelling experiments | Summary and conclusions | Further reading | Modelled glacier response to centennial temperature and precipitation trends on the Antarctic Peninsula This article is a summary of the following paper: Davies, B.J., Golledge, N.R., Glasser, N.F., Carrivick, J.L.,
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Ice core basics
Why use ice cores? | How do ice cores work? | Layers in the ice | Information from ice cores | Further reading | References | Comments | Why use ice cores? Ice sheets have one particularly special property. They allow us to go back in time and to sample accumulation, air temperature and air