The open-access paper “Subsurface warming in the Antarctica’s Weddell Sea can be avoided by reaching the 2^∘C warming target” by Vanessa Teske, Ralph Timmermann, and Tido Semmler has been published!

The study has been conducted as a co-operation between TiPACCs scientists and a project funded by the German Research Council (DFG). It investigates the temperature evolution of subsurface waters in Filchner Trough under four carbon dioxide emission scenarios using the AWI climate model. The model simulates the warm intrusions that have recently been observed near the Filchner Ice Shelf Front, suggests more frequent pulses in a warmer climate, and finds a regime shift from cold to warm water in Filchner Trough in two high-emission scenarios – with implications including an increased ice shelf basal melting and a reduced buttressing to the flow of grounded ice towards the ocean. The regime shift is mainly triggered by decreasing local sea ice formation and a shoaling thermocline. It can be avoided and the Filchner Trough warming can be restricted to 0.5 ^∘C by keeping global warming of the atmosphere below the 2 ^∘C mean temperature limit.

The figure shows the simulated temperature evolution until the end of this century in the Filchner Trough for the emission scenarios SSP1-2.6 and SSP3-7.0.