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The study led by Utrecht climate researcher Melchior van Wessem has found that some cold ice shelves in Antarctica, which were previously thought to remain stable in the under moderate warming scenarios, may actually be vulnerable. This is because the relatively low amount of snowfall on cold ice shelves like the Ross ice shelf may cause meltwater ponds to form at an average annual temperature of -15 degrees Celsius. If this happens, the adjacent land ice could flow more rapidly into the ocean, leading to faster sea level rise. This highlights the importance of accurately simulating snowfall in Antarctica in order to make more accurate predictions about melting and sea level rise.

Is it just my bias/imagination or is there a solid trend in very significantly underpredicting ice melt?

If I ran this whole show ice melt would be the top metric and we'd be seriously planning solar blocking because we don't even know that the natural peak temps of the Holocene (our current interglacial cycle) are too hot for modern society. If ice melt is this bad at these levels and PPMs a projected to hit 600-1000 in most likely scenarios... how else are you going to not kill a couple billion people and cause mass global breakdown?

If everybody used ice melt as the main metric they might not continuously underpredict the threat!

Scientists in this field tend to use conservative estimates to avoid being accused of alarmism.

Even if we have 100% accurate measurements and predictions, people will ignore them because they don’t want to believe they’ve been fooled.

All the predictions around climate change are happening to a greater extent and faster than predicted.

This keeps beating scientists estimates and bodes quite badly for our lives.

> Scientists in this field tend to use conservative estimates to avoid being accused of alarmism.

Surely scientists in this field give probabilities for low, medium and high risk scenarios?

Predictions around climate change which are happening to a greater extent and faster than predicted receive more attention.

By default a greater quantity of catastrophes is more noticeable.

Only being very conservative produces anything resembling a low risk situation.