Fifty years of routine in-situ and satellite observations have revealed the progressive deterioration of Antarctica’s most vulnerable regions to climate change: the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctic ice sheets. The rapid destabilisation of Larsen A and B ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula and the ongoing, potentially irreversible ice losses at Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, West Antarctica, have been linked to a complex marriage of ocean and atmosphere forcing mechanisms impinging on the continent from the Weddell, Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas. These phenomena have raised questions about the past and future stability of the ice sheets and water mass properties, and have motivated research focused on elucidating the precise ice-ocean-atmosphere interactions controlling oceanographic and cryospheric change over palaeo- to contemporary timescales. Offshore, similar questions have arisen regarding the role of seabed topography and changing sea ice and oceanographic conditions, and how such phenomena may ultimately impact ice sheet mass-losses.

This session welcomes contributions examining the range of controls driving cryospheric and oceanic change across the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctic Ice Sheet regions, as well as those in the wider Weddell Sea sector. Together with model and remotely sensed studies, this session will showcase early results from the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration and several recent research campaigns conducted in the Weddell Sea.