J. Clim. http://doi.org/mgs (2013)

Over the last 50 years, the Antarctic Peninsula has been warming at a greater rate than nearly all other locations on Earth. This has been attributed to a strengthening of circumpolar westerly winds, which is linked to human impact on the climate system.

Qinghua Ding and Eric Steig of the University of Washington, USA, use long-term weather station data from the Antarctic Peninsula to examine temperature changes. They investigate the period 1979 to 2009, and the temperature data is compared with tropical sea surface temperature from the Pacific Ocean.

Austral autumn is found to be the only season during which spatially extensive warming has occurred on the Antarctic Peninsula, accompanied by significant reduction in sea ice off the west coast. Warming in other seasons is restricted to smaller areas, with winter and spring warming observed mainly on the western side of the peninsula, reflecting the persistence of sea-ice anomalies from the autumn. The large-scale forcing behind the warming is linked to tropical Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies affecting atmospheric circulation.