4.4 East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS)
The rate of sea level contribution from the EAIS has a weak negative
relationship with global mean surface temperature (2051-2100: -0.1±0.2
mm/yr/K), indicating that increases in accumulation under warmer
conditions outweigh any losses from other processes. In fact, as was the
case for the WAIS, ice dynamics shows no obvious trend with temperature
(Fig. 7) suggesting that the only process relevant during the
21st century, irrespective of SSP, is changes in
snowfall. This conclusion is consistent throughout the IPCC assessment
reports (Church et al., 2013; Gregory and Huybrechts, 2006) despite
numerous advances and developments in process understanding, model
resolution and numerics. However, the lack of sensitivity is likely more
to do with how the forcing is prescribed and defined than with the
fidelity of the ice sheet models. Taking a different approach by
assessing the response to sub-shelf melting, a separate modeling study
found a significant sea level contribution was obtained for the EAIS
with a discernible sensitivity to the forcing scenario (Levermann et
al., 2020).