Extreme events
Clouds amplified the 2022 Antarctic heatwave
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Water-vapor and supercooled-cloud feedbacks added several degrees to the March 2022 East Antarctic heatwave compared with a preindustrial storyline.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
This library holds 5 empirical papers on extreme events with measured outcomes rather than reviews.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Water-vapor and supercooled-cloud feedbacks added several degrees to the March 2022 East Antarctic heatwave compared with a preindustrial storyline.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
A record event in one season does not by itself prove a shift in the full distribution.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Open questions
Tensions this paper is part of
From concept pages' “where studies disagree.” Disagreement means the same question; scope means different assays, populations, or outcomes.
A record event in one season does not by itself prove a shift in the full distribution.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Computational / modelling — 27 km CRYOWRF factual vs pseudo-global-warming storylines of the March 2022 heatwave
- N
- Storyline simulations driven by ERA5 and six CMIP6 deltas; not an observational sample N
- Population
- East Antarctic atmosphere/firn during 15–20 March 2022 under present and counterfactual climates
- Outcome
- Cloud/longwave amplification of heatwave temperature and future meltwater implications
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Inspect source passages
Clouds amplified the 2022 Antarctic heatwave
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
This event could generate up to 0.079 Gt of meltwater by 2100 under SSP5-8.5.
This single cold-season event alone would generate up to 0.079 Gt of meltwater by the end of the century under the SSP5-8.5 scenario.
What extreme event is attributed in this paper?
In March of the same year, yet another AR caused widespread warming across the East Antarctic ice sheet, setting new temperature records over an estimated 3.3 million km 2 area and producing notable impacts on the SMB, ice sheet processes and polar ecosystems – .
Key findings
Near Concordia the heatwave was amplified by 5.4 ± 0.2 °C versus preindustrial (15–25% of the anomaly). Current-climate peak temperature reached −12 °C (model −11.9 °C vs observed −11.6 °C). Incoming longwave radiation increased 16.0 ± 1.9 W m−2. Future coastal firn liquid water rises by factors of 2.4 (SSP2-4.5) and 5.6 (SSP5-8.5), up to 0.079 Gt of meltwater for this event under SSP5-8.5.
Methodology
The authors ran 27 km CRYOWRF storylines of 15–20 March 2022: a factual ERA5-driven case and counterfactuals for preindustrial, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5 climates using pseudo-global-warming deltas from six CMIP6 models, then diagnosed temperature, clouds, radiation, and firn hydrology.
Limitations
A single 27 km storyline of one event cannot sample all atmospheric-river trajectories. The model has a warm bias in the stable pre-event period and a too-high inversion. Cloud feedbacks remain a major CMIP6 uncertainty.
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