A 30 -year study reveals a hidden climatic driver heating the nucleus of Antarctica

The interior of eastern Antarctica warms up to a surprising pace, powered by the oceanic conditions which lead to hot air inside the land. For a long time, this icy heart could maintain the key to the future increase in sea level.

The trend of hidden warming of the Eastern Antarctica

Scientists have discovered that the deep interior of eastern Antarctica warms faster than its coastal regions, and they now know why. A 30 -year survey published in Nature communicationsLed by Naoyuki Kurita of Nagoya Universityhas retraced the cause of changes in the south of the Indian Ocean which send more hot air in the center of the continent. Eastern Antarctica, long considered as an observational “dead angle”, holds the majority of the planet’s glacial ice cream. This newly discovered process suggests that current climatic projections could underestimate how speed the Antarctic ice could be lost in the future.

Data collection in the hardest environment of the land

Antarctica is the coldest, driest and most windy place on the earth, storing around 70% of the world’s fresh water in its huge glacial caps. Until now, most of the region’s climate records came from inhabited research stations located along the coast. The interior of the continent has only four personnel bases, and only two of them provide long-term climatic data: the Amundsen-Scott station (South Pole) and the Vostok station (Interior of the East Antarctic). Consequently, a large part of what is happening inside has remained poorly documented.

To fill this gap, the researchers turned to three unmanned weather stations in eastern Antarctica which have been operating since the 1990s: the Dome Fuji station, the relay station and the Mizuho station. Using their records, the team has created a set of monthly average temperature data extending over 1993 to 2022, offering scientists the clearest view of how the hidden interior of the continent changes.

Why current climate models fail

An average annual temperature changes have shown that the three locations have increased temperature at a rate of 0.45 to 0.72 ° C per decade, faster than the global average. The researchers analyzed the meteorological and oceanic data and traced this increase in temperature to changes in the Southern Indian Ocean which modify the atmospheric circulation models and transport the hot air inwards of the Antarctic.

Current climatic models do not capture this warming process, so that future antarctic temperature projections can be underestimated. “While interior regions show rapid warming, coastal stations have not yet experienced the trends in statistically significant warming,” said Professor Naoyuki Kurita of the Institute for Environmental Research of Spatial Earth at the University of Nagoya. “However, the flow of hot air intensified over 30 years suggests that detectable warming and surface fusion could reach coastal areas like the Syowa station soon.”

The link of the Indian-Indian East of Antarctica

The ocean fronts – are where the warm and cold waters of the ocean meet – create sharp temperature limits in the south of the Indian Ocean. Because global warming heats ocean waters unevenly, it intensifies these temperature differences: stronger ocean fronts lead to greater storm activity and atmospheric changes that create a “dipolar” scheme, with low pressure systems in medium latitudes and high pressure on the Antarctic. The high pressure system on Antarctica pulls hot air to the south and transports it deeply into the continent.

Now, for the first time, scientists have complete data on weather stations demonstrating that the interior of the east of Antarctica warms faster than its coasts and has identified the main cause of this change. The study provides important information on the speed with which the largest ice tank in the world will respond to continuous global warming.

Reference: “Summer warming inside the Eastern Antarctic triggered by the warming of the Southern Indian Ocean” by Naoyuki Kurita, David H. Bromwich, Takao Cameda, Hideaki Mototoma, Anohico Hiraka, David Em Kelly, 22 Linegew A. 2025, Nature communications.
Two: 10.1038 / S41467-025-61919-3

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