Here we present a new dataset – the PolarRES ensemble – of four state-of-the-art regional climate models, which capture the full complexity of Antarctica's climate. The ensemble out-performs other available tools, advancing our ability to explore Antarctic climate. While it still has limitations, the PolarRES ensemble offers a novel and exciting way of evaluating climate processes and features, and we encourage researchers to use the data, which are freely available.

In this study, we investigate how removing water from beneath glaciers influences their water pressure and flow speed. Using a numerical model of Helheim Glacier, Greenland, and Thwaites Glacier, Antarctica, we find that extracting water from under the ice can moderately slow glaciers by lowering subglacial water pressure. Our work improves understanding of glacier dynamics and suggests that studying water removal could enhance knowledge of subglacial systems and potentially slow glacier flow.

Understanding the dynamics of permafrost heavily relies on process-based simulations. In this study, we introduce a new model specifically designed for permafrost applications, the Flexible Permafrost Model (FPM). This model serves as an adaptable framework for implementing innovative permafrost-related physics. Long-term ensemble simulations indicate that the permafrost temperature increased at a rate of 0.11 °C dec^-1 since 1980 with a decreased area of ∼12.4 % over the Tibetan Plateau.

The recently-launched NISAR satellite has potential to provide new measurements of the water stored in seasonal snow, but various non-snow factors can introduce error into these new measurements. We analyzed the effects of six non-snow errors and found that impacts from the ionosphere on NISAR phase data must be addressed for accurate snow measurements. Other non-snow factors can have partially offsetting effects on snow measurements, depending on environmental properties at a particular site.

Ice shelves slow the flow of Antarctic glaciers into the sea and help limit their contribution to sea level rise. Their stability depends on how different types of ice respond to stress. We collected a 37 m ice core from the Brunt Ice Shelf and carried out fracture experiments to measure ice strength. We found that refrozen surface melt strengthens the ice, while salty seawater weakens it, affecting how cracks grow and how ice-shelf break-up should be modelled.

Ice in the southern Antarctic Peninsula is experiencing major ice changes today and predicting the rate at which this may continue is important. One way to address this knowledge gap would be to retrieve a past climate record from an ice core. We identify a suitable site using a model constrained by radar and shallow ice core data. We find a climate record spanning the Holocene can certainly be extracted here, but a potential continuous climate record here could extend back ~ 30 000 years.

By simulating a section of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet over a deep fjord, we aim to understand the behaviour of ice sheets over rough landscapes. For perpendicular flow, we find reduced speed within the fjord and reverse flow at its base. Comparing real and smoothed topography shows that low-resolution models fail to capture these effects. Our findings have implications for Greenland ice sheet models, as commonly used bedrock resolutions likely overlook the influence of similar rough landscapes.

This study evaluates the assimilation of Ku-band radar backscatter into a multilayer snowpack model to support the upcoming Terrestrial Snow Mass Mission. Synthetic experiments were conducted at Arctic, continental, and alpine sites over three winters using a particle filter. Results show that assimilating backscatter improves estimates of snow water equivalent, depth, and vertical snow properties, laying the groundwork for future satellite missions focused on radar-based snow monitoring.

We mapped buried layers inside West Antarctic ice across 13,000 km² near the Amundsen–Weddell divide using radar. Some layers may be up to 17 kyr old. The layers remain well preserved in slow-moving ice but become distorted where ice flows faster. Snowfall has long been greater on one side of the divide, suggesting the ice divide has remained stable for thousands of years. Our study helps connect climate records across West Antarctica and improve models used to predict future ice-sheet change.

Understanding snow depth on sea ice is key for measuring ice thickness, studying ecosystems, and modelling climate. Using snow and ice thickness measurements from Arctic and Antarctic campaigns, this study examines sub-kilometre-scale (<1  km²) snow depth variations and identifies the most suitable statistical models for different ice ages, thicknesses, and weather conditions. These results can improve sub-grid snow parameterisations in snow models and remote sensing algorithms.

Surface melt of the Greenland Ice Sheet has increased dramatically since the turn of the century, aided by an increase in persistent atmospheric circulation patterns that promote anomalously warm conditions. Through modeling experiments, this study shows that surface mass loss would have been reduced by 62% relative to historical conditions if this shift in atmospheric circulation would have occurred under the lower average temperatures of a preindustrial climate.

Air circulation over Greenland affects ice melt by changing temperature, moisture, and wind. We study how much sunlight the ice reflects and how this relates to extreme melting. Focusing on the summers of 2012, 2019, and 2023, we explore the weather patterns that caused unusually warm conditions and how the Greenland ice sheet responded.

A quasi-static model is used to simulate the distribution of liquid water in the pore space of snow for various water contents. Liquid water is gradually introduced and then removed from a set of 34 3D tomography snow images by capillarity during wetting and drying simulations. This work constitutes an exploratory numerical work (i) to study the water retention curves and (ii) the effective transport properties of wet snow and how they are influenced by the water distribution at the pore scale.

An ensemble of regional climate model simulations is used to estimate the 21st century change in precipitation on the Greenland ice sheet. For the end of the century, the change is in the range 40 to 170 Gt per year, depending on the emission scenario. Using annual values of 2 m air temperature and precipitation, we estimate an increase in precipitation of 35 Gt per year for every degree of warming.

Understanding how much the Greenland ice sheet melted in response to past warmth helps better predicting future sea-level change. Here we present a framework called sea-level potential for using numerical ice-sheet model simulations to provide constraints on how much mass the ice sheet loses before different areas become ice-free. As observations from subglacial archives become more abundant, this framework can guide future subglacial sampling efforts.

The microwaves used in current products to measure snow depth don't pick up on the small changes in snow depth on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. To deal with these issues, our study suggests a new way of doing things. This uses Auto Machine Learning, data from satellite and other geographical information. Our results show that the method we used is good for checking how snow cover changes in mountain areas.

The study simulates the 21st-century evolution of Great Aletsch Glacier and Hintereisferner using full-Stokes ice dynamics and surface mass balance under different emission scenarios. Results show significant ice loss, with Hintereisferner expected to disappear by mid-century. Great Aletsch Glacier vanish by the end of the century under high-emission scenarios, but persist under lower-emission scenarios. These trends agree with large-scale models except some variability.

The Antarctic Peninsula is a mountainous region containing an ice sheet and peripheral glaciers. Differences remain between the methods used to estimate its mass changes. We use thousands of digital elevation models derived from high resolution stereoscopic images to calculate a new estimate of mass changes. We find that between 2007 and 2021, the ice sheet lost -28±6Gt/a and its peripheral glaciers -14±3Gt/a. We highlight the importance of resolving fine-scale changes in complex coastal areas.

We present an improved method for measuring mountain snow depth using NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite that accounts for steep terrain. By comparison to weather station and helicopter measurements, we show that ICESat-2 captures snow depth both over a season and across a mountain ridge. ICESat-2 works best when slopes are less than 20°. Enough mountain terrain falls within this slope range that ICESat-2 could dramatically expand snow depth observation and provide critical data for water management.