Antarctica has cooled – not warmed up – over the last 40 years
08/23/2021 / By Mary Villareal
As a whole, the Antarctic has cooled by about 2 degrees Celsius in the same 40-year period (1979 to 2018) that carbon dioxide rose from 337 to 410 parts per million – meaning that the world is actually getting colder, not hotter.
A paper published in the journal Atmosphere noted that the trends from ERA5 are consistent with these observations, showing that there is a cooling trend in East and West Antarctica, while a warming trend comes from the Antarctic Peninsula.
According to graphical illustrations of the surface air temperature trends from satellite observations in the study, most of Antarctica and much of the surrounding Southern Ocean cooled during this period. The researchers posited that one-third of the 40-year cooling trend can be attributed to the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). The MJO is the major fluctuation in the tropical weather on weekly to monthly timescales, characterized by its eastward-moving pulse of cloud and rainfall near the equator. It normally recurs every 30 to 60 days. This influence will likely accelerate the long-term cooling trend for Antarctica in the coming decades.
https://www.environ.news/2021-08-23-antarctica-cooled-in-last-40-years.html
