Coupled Climate-Ice-Sheet Simulations Reveal Novel Teleconnection Between Northern Hemisphere Ice Sheets and the Antarctic Ice Sheet

Coupled climate-ice-sheet modeling is still in its developing stage, and feedback processes between ice sheets and climate are still not yet fully understood. Here, we use simulations with a coupled climate-ice-sheet model to investigate teleconnections between Northern Hemispheric ice sheets and the Antarctic ice sheet (AIS) without direct freshwater forcing. We show that ice mass removal in the Northern Hemisphere can alter AIS evolution through a series of feedbacks. Changes in surface properties and orographic effects warm the newly deglaciated areas and the North Atlantic Ocean at mid-depth. The warmer water masses propagate to the Southern Ocean, where internal oscillations periodically deliver them to the Antarctic coast. These repeated warm water intrusions destabilize the Ross ice shelf, ultimately triggering a runaway retreat of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Our results underscore the importance of coupled bi-hemispheric climate-ice-sheet modeling to capture global teleconnections between ice sheets and climate.