Antarctic atmospheric rivers (ARs) are a form of extreme weather that transport heat and moisture from the Southern Hemisphere subtropics and/or mid-latitudes to the Antarctic continent. Present-day AR events generally have a positive influence on the Antarctic ice-sheet mass balance by producing heavy snowfall, yet they also cause melt of sea ice and coastal ice sheet areas, as well as ice shelf destabilization. In this Review, we explore the atmospheric dynamics and impacts of Antarctic ARs over their life cycle to better understand their net contributions to ice-sheet mass balance. ARs occur in high-amplitude pressure couplets, and those strong enough to reach the Antarctic are often formed within Rossby waves initiated by tropical convection. Antarctic ARs are rare events (~3 days per year per location) but have been responsible for 50–70% of extreme snowfall events in East Antarctica since the 1980s. However, they can also trigger extensive surface melting events, such as the final ice shelf collapse of Larsen A in 1995 and Larsen B in 2002. Climate change will likely cause stronger ARs as anthropogenic warming increases atmospheric water vapour. Future research must determine how these climate change impacts will alter the relationship among Antarctic ARs, net ice-sheet mass balance and future sea-level rise.

Correction to: Nature Reviews Earth & Environmenthttps://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-024-00638-7, published online 11 February 2025. In the version of the article initially published, the colour bar in Fig. 3 was labelled “Annual accumulated snowfall (kg m²)” and has now been amended to “Annual accumulated snowmelt (kg m²)” in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

Recent research shows increasing decadal ice mass losses from the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets and more generally from glaciers worldwide in the light of continued global warming. Here, in an update of our previous ISMASS paper (Hanna et al., 2013), we review recent observational estimates of ice sheet and glacier mass balance, and their related uncertainties, first briefly considering relevant monitoring methods. Focusing on the response to climate change during 1992–2018, and especially the post-IPCC AR5 period, we discuss recent changes in the relative contributions of ice sheets and glaciers to sea-level change. We assess recent advances in understanding of the relative importance of surface mass balance and ice dynamics in overall ice-sheet mass change. We also consider recent improvements in ice-sheet modelling, highlighting data-model linkages and the use of updated observational datasets in ice-sheet models. Finally, by identifying key deficiencies in the observations and models that hamper current understanding and limit reliability of future ice-sheet projections, we make recommendations to the research community for reducing these knowledge gaps. Our synthesis aims to provide a critical and timely review of the current state of the science in advance of the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report that is due in 2021.