Antarctica has been warming for the last 50 years
January 21st, 2009A paper coming out in Nature this week, authored by two of the folks at RealClimate, shows that Antarctica has been warming for the last 50 years, and that it has been warming especially in West Antarctica.
The authors argue that the warming basically has to do with enhanced meridional flow — there is more warm air reaching West Antarctica from farther north (that is, from warmer, lower latitudes). This change in atmospheric circulation goes along with reduced sea ice in the region (while sea ice in Antarctica has been increasing on average, there have been significant declines off the West Antarctic coast for the last 25 years, and probably longer). And this is self reinforcing (less sea ice, warmer water, rising air, lower pressure, enhanced storminess).
A recent paper in Nature Geosciences by Gillet et al. examined trends in temperatures in the both Antarctic and the Arctic and concluded that “temperature changes in both … regions can be attributed to human activity.”