PICANTE - Processes, Impacts, and Changes of ANTarctic Extreme weather

Extreme weather events, from heatwaves to flooding, are becoming stronger and more frequent in a visible manifestation of climate change. In Antarctica, extreme weather depletes the ice sheet through enhanced melting, which can raise global sea level, or strengthens the ice sheet through enhanced snowfall, which can lower global sea level.

Antarctic extreme weather events (AEWE) are poorly understood and complex phenomena driven by factors across a range of scales. At the regional scale, they are driven by high and low-pressure systems, such as those seen on weather maps, and by atmospheric rivers - currents of air thousands of kilometres long - which bring warm and moist air from lower latitudes. In turn, these weather systems are driven by larger-scale patterns of climate variability, such as the El Niño/Southern Oscillation and the strength of the westerly winds encircling the Antarctic, which may themselves be affected by human-induced climate change.

The PICANTE project aims to transform our understanding of the characteristics and drivers of AEWE, to disentangle the roles of natural climate variability and human influence, and to use this knowledge to predict the impact of future AEWEs on Antarctic climate and ice shelves. Ice shelves are particularly vulnerable to AEWE because they melt from both the bottom up (from warm ocean water) and the top down (from warm air). Thinner ice shelves are less stable and prone to collapse; this is important because ice shelves dam the flow of Antarctica's grounded ice into the ocean. Losing the ice shelves causes the ice sheet to slide into the sea faster, causing global sea level to rise.

To achieve our aim, we have identified five objectives fit to the scope of the call.

1) To compile a comprehensive dataset of AEWEs, their weather system drivers, and their local climate impacts using observations from Antarctica's weather station network, interpolated data from a wider network of observations (climate reanalysis)...