Current reversal leads to regime change in the Amery Ice Shelf cavity in the 21st century

Jin, Jing; Payne, Antony J.; Bull, Christopher Y. S.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1873-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1873-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1873-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 5

Research article

|

15 May 2025

Research article |

| 15 May 2025

Current reversal leads to regime change in the Amery Ice Shelf cavity in the 21st century

Jing Jin, Antony J. Payne, and Christopher Y. S. Bull

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1873-2025-supplement

Data sets

MOHC UKESM1.0-LL model output prepared for CMIP6 CMIP historical Y. Tang et al. https://doi.org/10.22033/ESGF/CMIP6.6113

MOHC UKESM1.0-LL model output prepared for CMIP6 ScenarioMIP ssp126 P. Good et al. https://doi.org/10.22033/ESGF/CMIP6.6333

MOHC UKESM1.0-LL model output prepared for CMIP6 ScenarioMIP ssp585 P. Good et al. https://doi.org/10.22033/ESGF/CMIP6.6405

Model code and software

AME025 configuration (Version 2022) J. Jin et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10797900

Short summary

The Amery Ice Shelf cavity is one of the largest cold cavities filled by relatively cold Dense Shelf Water. However, in this study, we show that warm intrusion of modified Circumpolar Deep Water flushes the Amery cavity, which changes it from a cold cavity to a warm cavity and leads to an abrupt increase in the basal melt rate in the 2060s. The shift to a warm cavity is attributed to a freshening-driven current reversal in front of the ice shelf.