Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02107-5.epdf


Quote:

A twenty-first century structural change inAntarctica’s sea ice system From 1979 to 2016, total Antarctic sea ice extent experienced a positive trend with record wintermaxima in 2012 and 2014. Record summer minima followed within the period 2017-2024, raising the possibility that the Antarctic sea ice system might be changing state. Here we use a Bayesian reconstruction of Antarctic sea ice extent which extends the record back to 1899, to show that the sequence of extreme minima in summer Antarctic sea ice extent is unlikely to have happened in the 20th century. We show that they represent a structural change in the sea ice system, manifest by increased persistence in the sea ice extent anomalies and a strongly reduced tendency to return to the mean state. Further, our analysis suggests that we may no longer rely on the past, long-term, behavior of the sea ice system to predict its future state. Extreme conditions may characterize the future state of Antarctic sea ice.

So, after increases in Antarctic sea ice extent until 2014 extent started decreasing until record minima started happening 2017 on. Normal, pre-2014 minima may no longer happen.

The paper is mostly detailed Bayesian analysis—won’t try to understand and explain.

I don’t know how the marked decline in Antarctic sea ice extent would affect the Thwaites Glacier ice shelf.

Thwaites contributes 5% of the sea level rise. That ice shelf goes that 5% will increase markedly! LOTS of low lying land: coral atolls, a lot of Florida, The Netherlands, the Nile and Bangladesh deltas etc. Deltas are fertile and well watered so provide a lot of food supplies: Holland is the world number two in food exports after the US.

The Bangladesh delta has suffered from salt water incursions ruining farmland for years, any increase in the rate of sea level rise will see more and more farmland ruined, even flooded.

Something to think about.