Antarctic warming confirms climate change affecting every continent
November 1st, 2008Scientists have confirmed that human-induced global warming has been heating up Antarctica.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released in February 2007 said that humanity’s impact on climate had been detected on every continent except Antarctica. For the new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers compared 100 years of weather records from the Arctic and 50-plus years of those kept on Antarctica with the results of four computer models. Their findings: natural influences such as changes in the amount of sunlight or volcanic eruptions did not explain the warming trends, but the results matched when increasing levels of greenhouse gas emissions were added to the models.
In the past few decades, average Arctic temperatures have warmed roughly 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius); average temperatures in Antarctica have warmed slightly less than 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius). Researchers may have underestimated the Antarctic temperature change because they gave equal weight to readings from the cold continental interior – where another man-made problem, the ozone hole, has contributed to cooling in the spring and summer – and coastal regions, where warming is more pronounced. The coastal areas are most susceptible to climate warming in the coming century in Antarctica because they are the closest to the melt threshold. Areas close to the melting point can tip precipitously, as we’ve seen in Arctic Ocean sea ice in recent years.