South Pole Warming Three Times Faster Than World Average

Over the last three decades, the South Pole has experienced a record-high statistically significant warming of 0.61 ± 0.34 °C per decade, more than three times the global average. Here, we use an ensemble of climate model experiments to show this recent warming lies within the upper bounds of the simulated range of natural variability. The warming resulted from a strong cyclonic anomaly in the Weddell Sea caused by increasing sea surface temperatures in the western tropical Pacific. This circulation, coupled with a positive polarity of the Southern Annular Mode, advected warm and moist air from the South Atlantic into the Antarctic interior. These results underscore the intimate linkage of interior Antarctic climate to tropical variability. Further, this study shows that atmospheric internal variability can induce extreme regional climate change over the Antarctic interior, which has masked any anthropogenic warming signal there during the twenty-first century.

A few weeks ago a town in Siberia (in the Artic circle) had a record temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38C).

SOURCE – Nature Climate Change, BBC News
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

42 thoughts on “South Pole Warming Three Times Faster Than World Average”

  1. Have you ever been to Minnesota during the winter? I have a friend that lives there. He told me about his engine block warmer.

    A few problems with Florida and Climate Change. First, the rising sea. Florida is made out of permeable limestone. You won’t be able to stop the sea from taking the land. Second, hurricanes will be stronger and more frequent. Third, it will get hotter and more humid. And if the electric grid fails during an heat wave a lot of old people will die.

  2. Funny that people are moving from Minnesota to Florida rather than the reverse. It’s almost like we prefer warmer temps!

  3. According to Dr Roy Spencer, we would have had to reduce economic activity four times more just to halt the upward trend in atmospheric CO2.

  4. Classifications from regional and global climate models: Performances
    for present climate estimates and expected changes in the future at high spatial resolution
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169809519303667

    Information Theory to Evaluate
    Directional Precipitation Interactions Over the West Sahel Region in Observations and Models
    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018JD029160

    Developing climate model ensembles: A comparative case study
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169418308254

    ‐Scale SE Pacific Sea Surface Temperature Variability Over the Past 2,300 Yearshttps://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018PA003465The Medieval Climate Anomaly in Antarctica
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018219303190

    there are thousands of critical papers more or less ignored

  5. Who makes things up? It´s all out there…
    Climate models render as much as they can by applying the laws of
    physics to imaginary boxes tens of kilometers a side. But some
    processes, like cloud formation, are too fine-grained for that, and so
    modelers use “parameterizations”: equations meant to approximate their
    effects. For years, climate scientists have tuned their
    parameterizations so that the model overall matches climate records. But
    fearing criticism by climate skeptics, they have largely kept quiet
    about how they tune their models, and by how much. That is now changing.
    By writing up tuning strategies and making them publicly available for
    the first time, groups hope to learn how to make their predictions more
    reliable—and more transparent.

    https://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6311/401

  6. Who makes things up? It´s all out there…
    Climate models render as much as they can by applying the laws of physics to imaginary boxes tens of kilometers a side. But some processes, like cloud formation, are too fine-grained for that, and so modelers use “parameterizations”: equations meant to approximate their effects. For years, climate scientists have tuned their parameterizations so that the model overall matches climate records. But fearing criticism by climate skeptics, they have largely kept quiet about how they tune their models, and by how much. That is now changing. By writing up tuning strategies and making them publicly available for the first time, groups hope to learn how to make their predictions more reliable—and more transparent.

    https://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6311/401

  7. Your changing subjects and switching to a Gish Gallop is just an admission that you were wrong.

  8. Just to make it even simpler for you, you claimed: “. . . and next 15 years are cooling . . .”. That (definitive) claim of yours is not supported in the study you cite. You made it up.

  9. You claimed: “Climate modelers finally back on a schientific track and admitting that their own models are basically too complex to understand and next 15 years are cooling,”

    Obviously you have read your own link, you are simply to thick to understand what you read:
    “In the short-term all points on the globe could individually experience cooling or no warming, although in a probabilistic sense they are much more likely to warm.”

    Internal variability does not mean the Earth ceases to absorb a net amount of energy, it just means that the energy can be buried in the ocean by events like ENSO for periods as long as about 15 years, concealing the warming trend if you’re only judging that trend by surface temperature measurements. NO climate scientists have disputed that this happens, in fact it’s obvious to all but the ignorant that internal variability does this quite often.

  10. When we quantify the relative roles of the dif-ferent uncertainties for the mid-term time-scale wefind that internal variability is still the largest driverof what we will observe (figure2; right column),howevermodeluncertaintiesandscenariouncertain-ties play a larger role than on the short-term time-scale, with model uncertainties the larger of the two,…

    Here, we find that a low estimate ofinternal variability would mean that model uncer-taintybecomesthemaindriver,whileahighestimateshowsinternalvariabilityasthecleardriver(figure3).This shows that model differences in internal variab-ility do indeed matter for making projections on themid-term time-scale.

    These differences could be due to the factthat not all models have the same internal variab-ility (e.g. Suttonet al2015) or due to the fact thatinternal variability itself may change under externalforcing(e.gMaheret al2015).This has not previously been considered in the Hawkins and Sutton-type breakdown.

    Modeluncertainty is found to be the main driver of mid-term trends when we take a low estimate of internalvariability, while with a high estimate, internal vari-ability instead dominates. This result highlights theimportance of using multiple SMILEs, with a rangeof estimates of internal variability in future studiesinvestigating mid-term time-scales and underscorestheimportanceofevaluatingnotjustamodel’smeanstate or forced trend, but also its internal variability.

  11. Please tell me which part did I misread instead of baseless accusations…

    “We confirm that in the short-term, surface temperature trend projectionsare dominated by internal variability, with little influence of structural
    model differences or warming pathway. Additionally we demonstrate that this
    result is independent of the model-dependent estimate of the magnitude ofinternal variability. Indeed, and perhaps counter intuitively, in all models alack of warming, or even a cooling trend could be observed at all individualpoints on the globe, even under the largest greenhouse gas emissions. Thenear-equivalence of all six SMILEs and CMIP5 demonstrates the robustness ofthis result to the choice of models used. On the mid-term time-scale, we
    confirm that structural model differences and scenario uncertainties play a
    larger role in controlling surface temperature trend projections than they didon the shorter time-scale. In addition we show that whether internalvariability still dominates, or whether model uncertainties and internalvariability are a similar magnitude, depends on the estimate of internalvariability, which differs between the SMILEs. Finally we show that even out tothirty years large parts of the globe (or most of the globe in MPI-GE andCMIP5) could still experience no-warming due to internal variability.”

  12. Why would a few months of 40% decrease in the rate of human increase of CO2 in the atmosphere stop warming? If we cut it to 0% and planted a bunch of new trees to reduce the CO2, you might start to have an argument, though any yearly change we might make would be tiny compared to the many decades we’ve spent adding CO2, so any impact would be small from just a few months or a year of effort.

    Besides, the reduction was more like 17% globally, and is estimated to average 5% for the year. So barely slowing human contributions to CO2.

  13. There is some weak evidence, and speculation, that there were small villages in the S. Pole under the current ice cap. This is not new, just new to us.

  14. I like thought experiments. So, what if, for the sake of argument, we know with complete certainty that humanity’s overall emissions dropped 40% during this pandemic, yet the planet is continuing to warm, specifically faster at the poles? Does this mean we’ve hit runaway greenhouse levels already and are powerless to stop it? Because, that’s no fun.

    We should travel to another planet and mine gold from its atmosphere to… oh… oh, wait… that feels familiar… 😉

  15. To be fair about it, the sun has been getting gradually brighter over geologic time. It was about 3% dimmer during the cretaceous. Maybe as much as 10% at the beginning of the pliocene.

  16. Even if planet is becoming greener, human caused changes to climate are just not good. To mess up thing like climate is bad, because consequences are unpredictable and you cant just fix it. Sea currents can change and so climate changes. Trees grow slowly and new conditions are not good for old tree species so you can get mass extinction event,.. Indirect economic damages keep climbing up,…

    I am opposed to every form of geoengineering, which doesn’t deal with the cause (unpredictable consequences). Pills have their side effects.
    The best is to remove excessive co2 and methane,.. The cheapest seems to plant a lot of trees and use iron fertilisation. Iron fertilisation should be studied much more, has a lot of potential to get a lot of Co2 from the atmosphere in a relative short ammount of time and store most of it deep down. It is also cheap.

  17. During covid-19 confinement it is estimated that human activity fell by as much as 40%. What happened to CO2 levels during that time?


    Nothing!
    Let’s face it: Humans have very little influence on CO2 levels on this planet. According to IPCC’s numbers, human emissions account for 3 to 4% of yearly natural emissions (and CO2 only represents 7% of greenhouse gases, but that’s another story).
    CO2 levels follow temperature changes, not the opposite. It has been confirmed by every measures, every fossile records we know of for hundreds of millions of years.

  18. At 3/10ths of a degree per decade, and a starting point of… ‘The mean annual temperature of the interior is −57 °C’ per Wiki – that’s roughly 190 decades before it’s gone.

    On the good side, your property should be paid for by then. On the bad, your many-great-grandkids will likely have forgotten about it.

  19. There is a mitigating argument, rarely (if ever) acknowledged by the CAGW crowd:

    Photosynthesis – Plants/Plankton turning Sunlight/CO2/H2O into Food/O2; neither animal nor blade
    of grass would exist, absent CO2. For ~75% of the last half-Billion years, CO2 was 2 to 15 times higher than now. It helps plants resist drought/damage/disease, extends growing seasons, lets plants move higher in altitude & Latitudes, shrinks deserts & reduces the spread of fire, plants using & retaining H2O more efficiently. As CO2 levels rise, photosynthesis flourishes & plants take in more CO2, sparking more growth, photosynthesis & CO2 uptake. Rising temperatures also extend growing seasons, help babies survive, increase net rainfall & save lives.
    This Cradle of Life is greener, more fertile & life sustaining than it was 50 years ago.

  20. I have been pointing out the need for Space Solar, using lunar ISRU, for over 40 years. When people talk about 2100, they are being irrational if they don’t consider O’Neill.

  21. I like the *burn waste* and salt/safe fission, but we need 10 TWe min, more like 20-200 TWe actually, and no Earth based power source can compete on price at that scale with existing fusion, collected in Space, or on the Moon. Can’t even build the transmission lines for that cost!

  22. The best models are from the Earth’s own geologic past. We already know what effect significantly higher CO2 levels had during the Pliocene, Miocene, Eocene, Paleocene, and even during the Cretaceous and Jurassic eras.

  23. As creatures of the Pleistocene and Holocene, human civilization has managed to create– an artificial Pliocene atmosphere– that is alien to our species with enough CO2 currently in the atmosphere to significantly melt the polar icecaps while substantially raising sea levels. Sea levels during the Pliocene may have been nearly 35 meters higher which would put cities like New York, Boston, New Orleans, and nearly the entire state of Florida underwater. 
    Of course, if we continue to burn fossil fuels, we could create atmospheric conditions that could eventually raise sea levels by more than 60 meters.

  24. I think we should build lots of nuclear fission.
    Fusion, space solar & a few others are stuff that deserve a fair bit of R & D money to see if they really can be practical energy sources. They aren’t there yet & we should do something now.

  25. Bought 20 acres on the Kenai Peninsula for this very reason as a retirement location. I’m a conservative who believes in man made warming as a factor, I just think it’s too late to do anything about it. Give it 50 years and we’ll be up to our eyeballs in time shares and bikini’s.
    My main concern is that the Antarctic alone has the capability to raise sea levels by 300 feet according to reports I have read. Even a fraction of that is game over for most coastal cities.

  26. Thinking long term, we can simply move to O’Neill Space and leave the Earth as a Nature Preserve. We can take sea water with us, on the elevator or whatever, to use in O’Neill Settlements, so that the sea level of Earth is down to the lowest ice age level when highest. This will expose scientific sites and keep the incoming water from drowning all but mountains.

  27. I like cool weather, but Antarctica is a bit much, especially with the shoggoth problem they have down there…

  28. The less well we understand, the more the reason to do something that will solve any such problem, which could be worse than models indicate. Time for O’Neill to happen. Whether there is cooling, heating or it stays the same!

  29. The uncertainty on this one issue relating to humans on Earth is sufficient, but not necessary, given all the other considerations, reason to instantly start a full blown effort to follow O’Neill plans into Space. Space Solar first.

  30. Yeah! Let’s open up some new real estate. Send all humans who like cold weather to Antarctica.

  31. Whether global heating is true, or not, just to cover all cases, and avoid objections from either *side*, it is time to go with Space Solar NOW. Then, whatever is true about the climate, we will be *able* to reverse our input or at least balance it with shades, etc, which are only practical using Space ISRU, while stopping the main probable culprit. http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/pdfz/documents/2009/70070criswell/ndx_criswell.pdf.html for a specific proposal, which needs to be re costed down in light of cheap Musk rockets. If it turns out the climate is OK, we will still get rich doing LSP, and blow open the door to O’Neill Space, as described in the MUST READ “The High Frontier”. Those interested in living on Earth, Mars or distant interstellar planets take notice, your plans are wrong headed!

  32. As I have observed before, it’s inherent in the claimed mechanisms for global warming, (Which all amount to increased insulation.) that the night warms more than the day, and the cold places warm more than the hot places.

    So, not a shocker.

  33. There are a lot of factors that contribute to the warming of the planet. 

    Some of them are:

    Accumulating CO2, Methane in the atmosphere.
    Oceans accumulate excessive heat and are getting warmer.
    Permafrost is melting and releasing even more methane into the atmosphere.
    Forests are burning and than increases the pace of global warming. (less trees to remove co2, regulate microclimate, burning trees releases heat and co2,…)
    Ice in the poles is melting and so the poles are getting warmer.
    Since there is less snow to reflect sunlight back(abledo) and cool the earth that increases the pace even more.
    The ice in the Antartica(and other places) is changing color and since the albedo is different even more heat gets absorbed, more ice melts and the pace increases.

    And so on and on. It is more complex model with multiple branches causes and effects and they seem to point in the direction, which is just not good, just adds up on one another and we get a negative chain of events.

  34. Thermometers are so “old science”, let’s use computer models instead.
    That way we can predict the next apocalypse and make sure we get our next research grant.

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