Hmmmmm, or not ~cr
Kyle Clem, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
Climate scientists long thought Antarctica’s interior may not be very sensitive to warming, but our research, published today, shows a dramatic change.
Over the past 30 years, the South Pole has been one of the fastest changing places on Earth, warming more than three times more rapidly than the rest of the world.
My colleagues and I argue these warming trends are unlikely the result of natural climate variability alone. The effects of human-made climate change appear to have worked in tandem with the significant influence natural variability in the tropics has on Antarctica’s climate. Together they make the South Pole warming one of the strongest warming trends on Earth.
The South Pole is not immune to warming
The South Pole lies within the coldest region on Earth: the Antarctic plateau. Average temperatures here range from -60℃ during winter to just -20℃ during summer.
Antarctica’s climate generally has a huge range in temperature over the course of a year, with strong regional contrasts. Most of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula were warming during the late 20th century. But the South Pole — in the remote and high-altitude continental interior — cooled until the 1980s.
Scientists have been tracking temperature at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Earth’s southernmost weather observatory, since 1957. It is one of the longest-running complete temperature records on the Antarctic continent.
Our analysis of weather station data from the South Pole shows it has warmed by 1.8℃ between 1989 and 2018, changing more rapidly since the start of the 2000s. Over the same period, the warming in West Antarctica suddenly stopped and the Antarctic Peninsula began cooling.
One of the reasons for the South Pole warming was stronger low-pressure systems and stormier weather east of the Antarctic Peninsula in the Weddell Sea. With clockwise flow around the low-pressure systems, this has been transporting warm, moist air onto the Antarctic plateau.
South Pole warming linked to the tropics
Our study also shows the ocean in the western tropical Pacific started warming rapidly at the same time as the South Pole. We found nearly 20% of the year-to-year temperature variations at the South Pole were linked to ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific, and several of the warmest years at the South Pole in the past two decades happened when the western tropical Pacific ocean was also unusually warm.
To investigate this possible mechanism, we performed a climate model experiment and found this ocean warming produces an atmospheric wave pattern that extends across the South Pacific to Antarctica. This results in a stronger low-pressure system in the Weddell Sea.
We know from earlier studies that strong regional variations in temperature trends are partly due to Antarctica’s shape.
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet, bordered by the South Atlantic and Indian oceans, extends further north than the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, in the South Pacific. This causes two distinctly different weather patterns with different climate impacts.
More steady, westerly winds around East Antarctica keep the local climate relatively stable, while frequent intense storms in the high-latitude South Pacific transport warm, moist air to parts of West Antarctica.
Scientists have suggested these two different weather patterns, and the mechanisms driving their variability, are the likely reason for strong regional variability in Antarctica’s temperature trends.
Read more: How solar heat drives rapid melting of parts of Antarctica’s largest ice shelf
What this means for the South Pole
Our analysis reveals extreme variations in South Pole temperatures can be explained in part by natural tropical variability.
To estimate the influence of human-induced climate change, we analysed more than 200 climate model simulations with observed greenhouse gas concentrations over the period between 1989 and 2018. These climate models show recent increases in greenhouse gases have possibly contributed around 1℃ of the total 1.8℃ of warming at the South Pole.
We also used the models to compare the recent warming rate to all possible 30-year South Pole temperature trends that would occur naturally without human influence. The observed warming exceeds 99.9% of all possible trends without human influence – and this means the recent warming is extremely unlikely under natural conditions, albeit not impossible. It appears the effects from tropical variability have worked together with increasing greenhouse gases, and the end result is one of the strongest warming trends on the planet.
These climate model simulations reveal the remarkable nature of South Pole temperature variations. The observed South Pole temperature, with measurements dating back to 1957, shows 30-year temperature swings ranging from more than 1℃ of cooling during the 20th century to more than 1.8℃ of warming in the past 30 years.
This means multi-decadal temperature swings are three times stronger than the estimated warming from human-caused climate change of around 1℃.
The temperature variability at the South Pole is so extreme it currently masks human-caused effects. The Antarctic interior is one of the few places left on Earth where human-caused warming cannot be precisely determined, which means it is a challenge to say whether, or for how long, the warming will continue.
But our study reveals extreme and abrupt climate shifts are part of the climate of Antarctica’s interior. These will likely continue into the future, working to either hide human-induced warming or intensify it when natural warming processes and the human greenhouse effect work in tandem.
Kyle Clem, Research Fellow in Climate Science, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Was there a change in the type and number of diesel generators used at the stations next to the instruments?
I have just trawled through all the responses as well as the article, and noticed that no-one has mentioned the line of sub-glacial volcanoes which separate east from west Antarctica. They affect ice and atmospheric temperatures above them (and remember that Mount Erebus, an active volcano, is one of them). I suggest that these volcanoes have more to do with the minor amounts of warming that everyone seems to be agitated about, than human’s minute addition to the atmospheric CO2.
What else would we expect from Victoria Wellington University in New Zealand .
James Renwick is now a professor there after his alarmist time as head scientist at NIWA.
He has been pushing global warming for many years and is right up there with Mike Mann pushing DAGW.
The satellite records show no warming so they ignore them but when the satellites show rising sea levels they jump aboard and tell us we are all going to be flooded when tide gauges show little change .
At minus 55C we have nothing to worry about till the next ice age .
Graham
The biggest problem confronting humanity is, of course, that this warming will release the frozen Elder Things and their Shoggoth servants. You can kiss it all goodbye if that happens. Bill Nye predicted it!
Sigh…
Here is a big something which they have missed. Look at the winds which are blowing across the middle of the continent. … https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-313.87,-89.47,481/loc=135.435,-85.350
When those winds move back out across the ocean after crossing over land they are carrying very cold air to the north. There is a large cold bulge to the west of South America which stretches north to 23 degrees S. Take a look at 500 hPa at the cold later. When you drop to the surface you can see that the cold extends down to the ocean surface where a finger of cold ocean water emulates the shape of the cold layer at 500 hPa, … https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-119.77,-63.40,481/loc=-113.838,-31.318
And they wonder why no sane person who’s only agenda is to make it through their daily travails as they work to take care of their families and enjoy life takes them seriously anymore? Why we don’t buy into their ever cycling redux of doom? Why “climate change” remains at the bottom of the list of concerns for everyday people even in developed countries? Why we don’t trust our government nor the “scientists” they fund?
The lies just never end and the hype has made us immune. God help us if a real natural crisis that is an emerging threat to humanity comes to pass. With the credibility of government “scientists” and those in academia destroyed, they can scream from the rooftops forever and we will just think they’re crying wolf again and go on not taking their claims of doom seriously.
Climate change and now COVID has done much to expose the agenda to many who did not see it before. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/07/02/explosive-about-all-these-new-positive-covid-cases-state-health-departments-manipulating-data-changing-definitions/
Absolutely right, and worse, given how many people graduating in the sciences go straight into bogus “climate change research,” there might not be anyone remotely competent to deal with such a crisis.
As usual this kind of research appears to conflate the temperature changes on one part of the Antarctic continent to all of this massive continent.
Just think of the temperature changes that happens to any one small area of the USA over any arbitrary short time period, and the averaged temperature across the whole of the USA over the same time period. Does the small area change tell you much about all of the USA? No it doesn’t!
Now remember that the continent of Antarctica is so much larger than the USA …
and that it is mostly high land rising to average of about 3,000 meters (~7,800 ft) above sea level (from sea level up to Vinson Massif, the highest peak in Antarctica at 4,892 m (16,050 ft)), so much of the temperature changes are NOT the same as temperature changes that happen at sea level.