Antarctic “Triple Whammy” Paper Lands Just As the Ice Rebounds
2 hours ago Charles Rotter 7 Comments
Charles Rotter
Last Friday’s Science Advances served up a new Antarctic doom paper, perfectly timed for the weekend news cycle. A team led by researchers at the University of Southampton announced they had diagnosed the cause of the decline in Antarctic sea ice since 2015 — a self-reinforcing combination of stronger westerlies, deepwater upwelling, and a positive feedback loop that the authors’ press release dubbed:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeb0166“a triple whammy of climate chaos.”
The press did its job. CNN, Euronews, and most of the major science desks ran with the framing intact. Co-author Alberto Naveira Garabato warned that, under continued low-ice conditions, the Southern Ocean itself could shift from a climate stabilizer to a major contributor to global warming. Lead author Aditya Narayanan added that the recent losses had wiped out an area of sea ice nearly the size of Greenland.
There is, however, a small problem with the timing.
Meanwhile, In the Actual Data
Two months earlier, in early March, the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that the 2026 Antarctic summer minimum had landed at roughly 2.58 million square kilometers — the largest summer minimum in five years, and 730,000 square kilometers above the 2023 record low. The 2026 minimum ranked 16th smallest in the 47-year satellite record. NSIDC’s Ted Scambos credited favorable winds that:
“pushed sea ice outward in the Weddell Sea”
during the late austral summer.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/05/10/antarctic-triple-whammy-paper-lands-just-as-the-ice-rebounds/
