Antartica Warming at Higher Speed Than Previously Thought

January 23rd, 2009

OK…I’m starting to trust a lot of these reports a little bit less every time. I have seen reports that melting has decreased in the North Poles this year, although that doesn’t mean it is anything more than an anomaly. Now this year we have probably the worst winter we have had in a decade, at least from my memory, and another report comes out about increased warming every other month.

Previously scientists had thought that Antartica was actually “cooling” overall while the rest of the world was heating up. Now with a total reversal they are saying that Antartica is warming at the rates the rest of the world.

They have broken Antartica in half so to speak in regards to temperature changes. While East Antartica has been getting colder, it is now evident that West Antartica has been warming at a rate closer to the rest of the world. So overall the heating in the west is greater than the cooling in the east. Meaning that overall the continent has been gaining temperature overall.

“West Antarctica is a very different place than East Antarctica, and there is a physical barrier, the Transantarctic Mountains, that separates the two,” said Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the Quaternary Research Center at the UW, as well as lead author of a paper documenting the warming published in the Jan. 22 edition of Nature.

According to Steig it was thought that only a very small portion of Antartica was heating up over the last 50 or so years, and that Western Antartica was not a part of that.

“People were calculating with their heads instead of actually doing the math,” Steig said. “What we did is interpolate carefully instead of just using the back of an envelope. While other interpolations had been done previously, no one had really taken advantage of the satellite data, which provide crucial information about spatial patterns of temperature change.”

Satellites calculate the surface temperature by measuring the intensity of infrared light radiated by the snowpack, and they have the advantage of covering the entire continent. However, they have only been in operation for 25 years. On the other hand, a number of Antarctic weather stations have been in place since 1957, the International Geophysical Year, but virtually all of them are within a short distance of the coast and so provide no direct information about conditions in the continent’s interior.

The scientists found temperature measurements from weather stations corresponded closely with satellite data for overlapping time periods. That allowed them to use the satellite data as a guide to deduce temperatures in areas of the continent without weather stations.

“Simple explanations don’t capture the complexity of climate,” Steig said. “The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling and that’s not the case. If anything it’s the reverse, but it’s more complex than that. Antarctica isn’t warming at the same rate everywhere, and while some areas have been cooling for a long time the evidence shows the continent as a whole is getting warmer.”

So…in essence they had weak data. Rather than a thorough examination of the continent they were just getting the edges until satellite measurements came into play. Greatly exaggerating the so-called cooling that was going on based on a sample that didn’t tell the whole story. Guess they should have made a better trek of the place. Maybe bring some cattle supplies and set up camp for while to get the real data.