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[Below is the original script. But a few changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]
Of the seven continents, only one has not shown a consistent warming in recent decades: Antarctica. But that's been largely thanks to a lack of long-term, reliable temperature records.
Now scientists have combined weather station records with satellite measurements to find that the frozen continent is indeed warming, according to research published in the scientific journal Nature.
Study author Eric Steig is a geochemist at the University of Washington: "What we found, in a nutshell, is that Antarctica is not cooling. … On average, the entire continent is warming and especially, it is warming in winter and spring."
In fact, Steig and his colleagues found that western Antarctica has warmed by as much as one degree Celsius since 1957. And even the extra cooling of eastern Antarctica by the ozone hole has not stopped the overall trend.
To be sure, the ice-sheathed continent is bathed in cold by fierce circumpolar winds and other climate factors and the lands east of the Transantarctic Mountains are getting even colder.
But this new research and other recent studies reveal that this cooling is outpaced by the heating of the western Antarctic.
As a whole, the continent at the bottom of the Earth has warmed by roughly half a degree Celsius in the last 50 years—cold comfort for climatologists.
—David Biello
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10 Comments
Add CommentSounds like they're trying aweful hard to prove that the earth is warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPZ, sounds like you might be trying awful hard to cherry-pick the measurements you support. What's your problem with their science? Do you think they picked 1957 because only that starting point leads to a warming conclusion. Perhaps that they went with 1957 because points previous are not reliable? They're just measuring the earth, they're not telling you to change your lifestyle...give them a break.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI didn't get this:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"But this new research and other recent studies reveal that this cooling is outpaced by the heating of the western Antarctic."
You said that Antartica is heating and then you talk about "this cooling"??? What cooling?
See this video for a discussion of Antarctica and sea levels:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr5O1HsTVgA
Are you (Eric Steiger) implying that the other six continents are not warming, or that you lack the data to verify that they are? Even if the warming is limited to Antarctica, you should acknowledge the likely adverse rising water levers elsewhere -- as on North American shorelines -- for otherwise the implications of your study could appear misleading.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy Goodness! Why don't people do their homework before engaging in criticizing scientists? Get the facts first, argue in doubt later. Otherwise get to some celebrity forum.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRead the rebuttal at
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/monckton_man_made.pdf
From: Ross Hays
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSent: Thursday, January 22, 2009 10:35 AM
To: Eric Steig
Subject: “New data show much of Antarctica is warming”
Eric, – Let me first say that this is my own opinion and does not represent the agency I work for. I feel
your study is absolutely wrong. There are very few stations in Antarctica to begin with and only a
handful with 50 years of data. Satellite data is just approaching thirty years of available information. In
my experience as a day-to-day forecaster who has to travel and do field work in Antarctica, the
summer seasons have been getting colder. In the late 1980s helicopters were used to take our
personnel to Williams Field from McMurdo Station due to the annual receding of the Ross Ice Shelf,
but in the past few years the thaw has been limited and vehicles can continue to make the transition
and drive on the ice. One climate note to pass along is that December 2006 was the coldest December
ever for McMurdo Station. In a synoptic perspective, the cooler sea surface temperatures have kept
the maritime storms farther offshore in the summer season and the colder more dense air has rolled
from the South Pole to the ice shelf.
There was a paper presented at the AMS Conference in New Orleans last year noting over 70% of the
continent was cooling due to the ozone hole. We launch balloons into the stratosphere and the
anticyclone that develops over the South Pole has been displaced and slow to establish itself over the
past five seasons. The pattern in the troposphere has reflected this trend with more maritime (warmer)
air around the Antarctic Peninsula, which is also where most of the automated weather stations are
located for West Antarctica, which will give you the average warmer readings and skew the data for all
of West Antarctica. With statistics you can make numbers go to almost any conclusion you want. It
saddens me to see members of the scientific community do this for media coverage. Sincerely – Ross
Hays, NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility
Darn it. I was hoping for warming. I'll wait a little longer. Maybe the cooling is only temporary. How cold would it be if we didn't have anthropogenic global warming prior to this recent cooling?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn researching my term paper on global warming I noted several studies that used arbitrary cut off dates to skew the results. You could slide the scale back and forth and get entirely different results. Two studies actually deleted a year as it was record cold, calling it an anomoly, however, they did not delete the hottest year. This is not science
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan you imagine how much money it takes to study the temperature of the entire globe over a long period of time? There's your answer. Follow the money, always. If not for 'Climate Change' research a whole lot of 'scientists' would be cheesy weathermen on local TV.