Antarctica is melting and we all need to adapt, a trio of climate analyses show
West Antarctica is headed for decades of rapid melting no matter how quickly humans cut greenhouse gas emissions, and 2023 shattered records for missing sea ice around the continent.
A trio of new scientific analyses about the loss of ice in Antarctica paint a picture of a continent in trouble. Sea ice is disappearing, gigantic portions of the West Antarctic ice sheet are crumbling and even relatively stable East Antarctica is showing worrying changes.
That's a problem for humanity.
Let's begin with the sea ice. Each winter, the ocean water around Antarctica freezes. Because Antarctica is in the Southern Hemisphere, this happens during North American summer months – deep winter in Antarctica is in July, August and September.
At its most expansive, the sea ice covers an
