Tropical Warm-Pool Teleconnection Triggers 695 Billion-Ton East Antarctic Snow Boom

Climate has pulled this trick before: in 2010–11 a strong La Niña parked rainfall over Australia, briefly dropping global sea level by ~5 mm before the upward march resumed. The new Antarctic ‘snow boom’ echoes that episode—showing how remote ocean heat can hijack atmospheric rivers and temporarily mask underlying ice-loss trends. Over the past century, teleconnections such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (first characterised in the 1990s) have repeatedly swung polar precipitation, yet they neither stop basal melting driven by ocean heat nor halt the post-Industrial acceleration of greenhouse forcing. On a 100-year horizon, what matters is whether episodic accumulation can outpace the mechanically accelerating discharge once buttressing ice shelves thin. History warns that transient gains lull societies into complacency—much as the 1960s West Antarctic ‘stability’ delayed concern until the 1970s oil-crisis era radar surveys revealed hidden thinning. The 2021-23 spike is therefore a climatic feint, not a reversal, underscoring a core systems lesson: short-run noise can overwhelm, but not overturn, century-scale thermodynamics.