Professor Matt King (University of Tasmania, Australia) 'Variability in Recent Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Change, and Near-Future Trends'.

Observations of Antarctica’s ice sheet show clear overall mass loss, but with substantial interannual to decadal variability. This seminar will focus on:

1. the connection of this variability to large-scale modes of climate variability — namely ENSO, the Southern Annular Mode, and the Amundsen Sea Low — demonstrating that these modes explain a significant component of the decadal variation in ice-sheet mass and elevation; and
2. the observational record of mass change, which is now sufficiently long that, combined with assumptions about ice-sheet inertia, it may hold predictive power for Antarctica’s contribution to sea-level rise over the coming decades.