antarctic-ice-shelf-utac

GenesisAeon Package 120 — real Antarctic ice shelf mass budget, a real Holocene meltwater-release feedback mechanism, and a real, sign-flipped regional asymmetry under CMIP6 projections. Deliberately has no UTAC/CREP/AFET bridge — see DISCLAIMER.md.

For a plain-language explanation of the same topic (German, no jargon, written for general audiences), see WHITEPAPER.md.

Where this package came from

Built alongside el-nino-amplification-utac (P118) and marine-heatwave-utac (P119) from a single broad DeepResearch pass (2026-08-31). cascading-tipping-utac (P87) only references WAIS as one node in a tipping-element network, not a standalone quantified treatment — this package fills that gap.

What's real here

• Davison et al. (2023, Science Advances) — of 162 Antarctic ice shelves studied 1997-2021, 71 lost mass (48 lost more than 30% of their initial mass), 29 gained, 62 showed no significant change. Total loss: 8.3 trillion tonnes. Basal melting was the dominant driver (68%). West Antarctica predominantly lost mass; East Antarctica predominantly stayed stable or gained.
• Nature Geoscience (2025) — sediment-record and ocean-model evidence for a real, self-reinforcing meltwater-release feedback that drove an ice-shelf collapse ~9000 years ago: meltwater strengthens stratification, which enhances warm deep-water inflow, which accelerates melting, which releases more meltwater.
• Muilwijk et al. (2026, The Cryosphere) — 10 CMIP6 models under a standardized meltwater perturbation show opposite-sign regional responses: East Antarctica's feedback amplifies warming (+0.16 to +0.26 degC median, up to +0.82 degC by 2100 under SSP5-8.5), while the Amundsen/Bellingshausen sectors of West Antarctica show cooling or suppressed warming (-0.5 to -1.5 degC).

Deliberately not one-sided

do_east_and_west_responses_share_the_same_sign() returns False — the CMIP6 regional finding directly complicates a naive "meltwater feedback always accelerates melting everywhere" reading of the Holocene mechanism documented alongside it. Both are real findings, kept explicit rather than smoothed into one narrative.

Installation

pip install antarctic-ice-shelf-utac

Quick start

from antarctic_ice_shelf_utac import (
    pct_shelves_losing_mass,
    is_loss_uniform_east_vs_west,
    do_east_and_west_responses_share_the_same_sign,
)

pct_shelves_losing_mass()  # 43.8
is_loss_uniform_east_vs_west()  # False
do_east_and_west_responses_share_the_same_sign()  # False -- the honesty check

License

Code: MIT. Documentation/data notes: see DISCLAIMER.md.

Citation

See CITATION.cff.