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Cooling in the Antarctic

Nature volume 535, pages 358–359 (2016)Cite this article

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The Antarctic Peninsula has been warming for many decades, but an analysis now reveals that it has cooled since the late 1990s. Inspection of the factors involved suggests that this is consistent with natural variability. See Letter p.411

Turner et al. show that the average temperature on the peninsula has decreased by about 0.5 °C per decade since the late 1990s, about the same rate at which it warmed in the preceding five decades. To understand this apparent reversal, one has to recognize that the average warming trend observed since the middle of the twentieth century reflects several aspects of Antarctic Peninsula climate. Which aspect dominates varies by both location and season. For example, the oft-heard claim that the peninsula is the fastest-warming place on Earth is accurate only during the winter, as recorded at the Faraday/Vernadsky station on the west coast. Winter warming at this station — more than 6 °C since records began in 1947 — is unambiguously associated with a rapid decrease in sea ice4.

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Figure 1: Glacier ice at James Ross Island, Antarctic Peninsula.

Tom Tobin

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eric J. Steig is in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.,

    Eric J. Steig

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  1. Eric J. Steig
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Correspondence to Eric J. Steig.

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Steig, E. Cooling in the Antarctic. Nature 535, 358–359 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/535358a

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