Antarctic snows

Here’s a sentence I have been promising to write on this blog since at least March this year: Antarctica has been gaining ice since 2020. Not losing, gaining. Only 68 gigatonnes a year admittedly, actually a mere drop in the ocean, (or should that be crystal in the ice sheet?), given the vast size of the place, but an (almost) new paper that I worked on, led by the excellent Marlen Kolbe, explains why. From Kolbe et al., 2026 Black: Monthly cumulative GMB anomalies from April 2002 to December 2024, based on GRACE (with respect to the mass as of 2011-01-01 before being subtracted from the GMB anomaly in April 2002 to show the changes since the mission launch). Dotted: Monthly cumulative SMB anomalies based on ERA5 from April 2002 to April 2025 (ERA5), December 2024 (HCLIM43) and December 2023 (RACMO2.4p), all with respect to the 1995-2010 mean, before subtracting their SMB from April 2002 (as for GRACE). Light straight solid lines indicate linear trend slopes from 2003 to 2019, and…