Editor's Summary
22 January 2009
Antarctic warming: climate reconstruction gets to the heart of the continent
The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the most rapidly warming locations on Earth, but it has been difficult to establish whether continent-wide changes are comparable to the clear upward trend in global average temperature. This is because most of the continuous records from ice-sheet weather stations are coastal, providing little information on the continental interior. This problem is by-passed in a new reconstruction of Antarctic surface temperature trends for 1957–2006, based on satellite data (with good spatial coverage for a short period) and air temperatures from weather stations (for a long timescale), blended via an algorithm that estimates missing data points in climate fields. The resulting record, more reliable than previous gap-filling exercises, suggests that overall the continent is warming by about 0.1 °C per decade, with stronger warming in winter and spring and over West Antarctica.
Authors: Making the paper: Eric Steig
Plugging data gaps shows warming across West Antarctica.
doi:10.1038/7228356a
Letter: Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year
Eric J. Steig, David P. Schneider, Scott D. Rutherford, Michael E. Mann, Josefino C. Comiso & Drew T. Shindell
doi:10.1038/nature07669
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (2,016K) | Supplementary information
