About the project

The PICANTE team are working to understand the causes and impacts of extreme weather events in the Antarctic.  

Weather and climate extremes becoming more frequent and intense are a visible manifestation of climate change, and they have a strong impact on the natural environment and society.  They are projected to become more frequent and intense in all areas of the world, including the Antarctic.  

Despite the fact that Antarctic extreme weather events (AEWE) have global implications, through potential detrimental impacts on ice shelf stability and sea-ice cover, leading to ice mass loss and global sea level rise, they are less well studied and understood than their counterparts in the rest of the globe.  

The 3.75 year PICANTE project aims to close this knowledge gap, to better understand the characteristics and drivers of AEWE, and to disentangle the roles of human influence and natural climate variability in changes to these events and their drivers, and to use this knowledge to predict future events and their impacts on Antarctic climate and ice.

The project, led by the University of Sheffield, involves scientists at the British Antarctic Survey, the University of Exeter, the University of Lincoln, Lancaster University and King’s College London. 

Objectives

The objectives of the project are to:

1. Derive a comprehensive data archive of AEWEs, their potential weather system drivers, and the weather impact of these extreme events. 

2.  Advance the understanding of the relative contributions of the chain of drivers of AEWE across different scales, and the local meteorological impacts of AEWE.

3.  Identify the model improvements needed to improve projections of AEWEs and their impacts.

4: Obtain future projected changes in drivers, AEWE, and their impacts on surface melt and firn.

5.  Identify the risk of unprecedented extremes and whether these unprecedented events look similar to those observed, but of larger magnitude, or whether there are regimes yet to be observed (but possible in the current climate) that, if realised, could trigger severe impacts.

To achieve these objectives, the project is divided into four workpackages:

1: Consolidating and extending the record of AEWE, their local weather impacts and weather system drivers

2.  Process-based understanding of AEWE and their representation in models

3.  Deciphering the large-scale drivers of AEWE and the role of natural and human forcings 

4.  Future projected changes in drivers, AEWE and their impacts on surface melt, firn and ocean melting of ice shelves