| Reporter<\/p>\n
April 28, 2026<\/p>\n
![\"Brunt](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/sea_ice_off_brunt_ice_shelf_modis_2021-01-31.jpg\")
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Sea ice forms off the edge of the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica\u2019s Weddell Sea.
\n NASA<\/p>\n
The massive ice sheet covering Antarctica holds enough water to raise the global sea level by\u00a0almost 200 feet<\/a>. Human-caused climate change has been making it melt<\/a>, raising the risk of flooding and other damaging effects<\/a> for people living in many corners of the world.<\/p>\n Now, two new studies reveal the complex ways in which the ocean and atmosphere are interacting with Antarctic ice, potentially spurring even more melting. One, published April 28 in the journal Communications Earth and Environment<\/a>, showed that deep-ocean heat has crept closer to Antarctica. Another, published last month in the journal\u00a0Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a>, found that powerful winds have allowed warmer water trapped below the surface to move upward.<\/p>\n Both projects relied on the\u00a0Argo network<\/a>, a fleet of robotic instruments that drift around the global ocean collecting data like temperature and salt content at various depths, including beneath Antarctic sea ice. While most bodies of water have a sun-heated top layer, the Southern Ocean\u2019s air temperature is so chilly that the warmer water gets trapped deep below the surface.<\/p>\n But that seems to be changing.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the past, the ice sheets were protected by a bath of cold water, preventing them from melting,\u201d says Sarah Purkey<\/a>, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and co-author of the\u00a0deep-ocean heat study, in a\u00a0statement<\/a>. \u201cNow, it looks like the ocean\u2019s circulation has changed, and it\u2019s almost like someone turned on the hot tap and now the bath is getting warmer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Understanding Ocean Mixing with Argo Floats | Nautilus Live<\/p>\n Purkey and her colleagues combined Argo data with measurements taken by ships around once every decade. Machine learning helped them generate month-by-month snapshots of the ocean over the past four decades. Analyses revealed that a mass of warm water usually contained in the ocean\u2019s depths has moved closer to Antarctica over the past 20 years, marking the first time scientists have seen this shift throughout the Southern Ocean.<\/p>\n The results didn\u2019t surprise the researchers. \u201cIt\u2019s something that had been predicted by climate models due to global warming,\u201d says study co-author Joshua Lanham<\/a>, a climate scientist at the University of Cambridge, in the statement.<\/p>\n \u201cOur work shows that there\u2019s also an observational trend that suggests that more heat is getting to Antarctica,\u201d\u00a0says study co-author\u00a0Ali Mashayek<\/a>, also a climate scientist at the University of Cambridge, to\u00a0Time<\/a> magazine\u2019s Simmone Shah.<\/p>\n Quick fact: The ocean is taking the heat<\/p>\n The ocean is storing more than\u00a090 percent<\/a>\u00a0of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by the surplus greenhouse gases that humans are producing.<\/p>\n The team behind the other study was motivated by an Antarctic mystery: Even as the world warmed, sea ice continued to expand through 2015. But in 2016, it collapsed dramatically and hasn\u2019t recovered.<\/p>\n Sea ice forms when Southern Ocean water seasonally freezes. It helps protect the Antarctic ice sheet from the damaging effects of waves and storms, so its loss can jeopardize the continent\u2019s ice.<\/p>\n Using Argo data, researchers found that until 2015, increased precipitation had been trapping the warming ocean water at deeper depths, insulating the sea ice. However, strong winds and storms\u2014probably driven by climate change\u2014starting around 2016 seem to have pushed aside the frigid surface water, allowing the warm, deep water to rise, which can melt sea ice and inhibit its formation.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we witnessed was basically this very violent release of all that pent-up heat from below that we linked to the sea ice decline,\u201d study co-author Earle Wilson<\/a>, an oceanographer at Stanford University, tells\u00a0Grist<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0Matt Simon.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1777997797_241_maxresdefault.jpg\")
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