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ANTARCTIC SCIENCE

Warming reaches the South Pole

Nature Climate Change volume 10, pages 710–711 (2020)Cite this article

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Over the last half of the twentieth century, surface temperature over the South Pole was steady if not slightly cooling, suggesting the high Antarctic interior might be immune to warming. Research now shows a dramatic switch; in the past 30 years, the South Pole has been warming at over three times the global rate.

Antarctic climate is riddled with contrasting changes. Over the last half of the twentieth century, westerly winds encircling the Southern Ocean intensified and shifted poleward, isolating Antarctica’s climate and cooling the high Plateau1. At the same time, the Antarctic Peninsula experienced record warmth2 and intense ice melt3. Most of West Antarctica also warmed4. Meanwhile, sea ice surrounding the continent showed contrasting regional trends in extent but overall a small net increase5. Then the twenty-first century brought a completely new set of changes. West Antarctica’s coastal ice shelves thinned dramatically6. Sea-ice extent swung wildly, reaching record highs in 2014 and then plunging to unprecedented lows in 2016 (ref. 7). Warming trends weakened over the Peninsula8 and West Antarctica9. Now, Kyle Clem and colleagues9 report that the most remote location on the planet — the South Pole — has been rapidly warming over the past 30 years, undoing the previous cooling. These new changes appear to be in response to increasing tropical western Pacific temperatures and to regional changes in winds induced by a warming planet.

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Fig. 1: Changes in Antarctic atmospheric circulation patterns and air temperature.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Sharon E. Stammerjohn

  2. Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Ted A. Scambos

Authors
  1. Sharon E. Stammerjohn
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  2. Ted A. Scambos
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Correspondence to Sharon E. Stammerjohn or Ted A. Scambos.

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Stammerjohn, S.E., Scambos, T.A. Warming reaches the South Pole. Nat. Clim. Chang. 10, 710–711 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0827-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0827-8

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