ExtAnt will provide the first comprehensive assessment of present day and future high impact extreme weather events in Antarctica, and associated risks. Key risks include impacts of extreme weather on vulnerable ice shelves, the breakup of which can speed up flow of grounded ice and affect global sea level, and on the highly specialised Antarctic biodiversity. This ambitious programme brings together leading UK and international scientists to use new modelling resources and methods to elucidate drivers of extreme events. New modelling capability will be developed to quantify impacts of extreme events on surface melt of ice shelves. These advances will bring a step change over current knowledge of extremes. ExtAnt’s legacy will include a dataset for advancing research into broader impacts, for example on ecosystems.

Definition of extreme weather events
We consider directly impactful extreme weather events (‘extreme events’). An important impact is the creation of surface melt. Specific thresholds on variables such as surface air temperature, precipitation, wind speed and surface energy balance will depend on the objectives and will in some cases be clarified through sensitivity studies. We consider spatial scales from the local (~10 km), e.g. over a specific ice shelf, to synoptic (up to ~2,000 km), e.g. related to larger-scale weather systems. We consider timescales from days, to capture specific weather events, to seasonal, to capture potential cumulative impacts of multiple extreme weather events or sustained anomalies.

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