Poster

IAMAS

JMC14 - Climate Change in the Polar Regions: Observing, Modelling and Predicting High Impact Transitions

Projected Amplification of Moisture Fluxes towards Antarctica by Synoptic Eddies

Synoptic weather systems play a significant role in transporting moisture to Antarctica, which affects snow and ice accumulation and, consequently, global sea levels. The latest generation of climate models predict significant changes in these systems' activity, including a hemisphere-wide increase during winter and a poleward shift during summer, which could have crucial implications for the Antarctic ice mass balance. Our findings indicate that current climate models forecast a substantial increase (~5% per decade) in synoptic moisture fluxes across the Antarctic Circle in the lower troposphere. This increase is primarily due to higher moisture content in these weather systems rather than the increase in synoptic wind variability, which is typically used to evaluate storm track amplification and shifts.