There are a complex set of drivers of ice sheet change, including tipping elements which may already have passed critical thresholds, particularly for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet case. SAI is likely to help restore the surface melting in Greenland by reducing temperature and insolation driven melt, but have the opposite impact in Antarctic, where the effect reduced accumulation from decreased snowfall under SAI likely dominates. Ocean driven melt is likely less effectively reduced by SAI, and in the West Antarctic is sensitive to circulation induced variation in heat transport below ice shelves, which in turn is dependent on injection strategy (Goddard et al., 2024).
Metric
Land-ice sea-level rise contribution at 0.5C cooling remains closer to where it would have been without SAI, than to the (historical) level when global mean temperature was the same (as the 0.5C cooler world).
Uncertainty
Several recent studies show that SAI would reduce loss of ice sheets (Moore et al., 2024; 2023; 2019; Goddard et al., 2024), relative to the warmer world without SAI, even if incompletely relative to the target state. For example, Moore et al. (2019) finds 15-20% reduced ice loss compared to the warmer world without SAI in the Greenland ice sheet, and Moore et al. (2023) finds a 31-38% reduction.
Decision relevance
A failure to arrest long-term sea-level rise would be a significant limitation on SAI. However, SAI would be very likely to reduce sea-level rise, but potentially at well below 100% efficacy if dynamic contributions from ice-sheets dominate.