How does Antarctic ice deform?

Mass loss from ice sheets that cover Earth presents the largest potential contribution to future sea level rise, yet uncertainties in predicting the magnitude and pace of this depletion hamper climate adaptation planning and coastal infrastructure decisions. Fast-flowing glaciers—moving masses of ice, snow, rock, and sediment—transition to floating ice shelves that extend from land to the ocean. These ice shelves exert buttressing forces on inland upstream ice, affecting ice sheet stability (1). A key factor governing the ice flow dynamics is the deformation of ice under stress. Elucidating rheological parameters at the scale of an entire ice shelf, which extends over hundreds of kilometers, has been a long-standing challenge in glaciology. On page 1219 of this issue, Wang et al. (2) report a physics-informed deep-learning model that can predict the deformation behavior of Antarctic ice shelves, revealing complexities of the process that extend beyond the traditional understanding.