Tuesday, October 8, 2024

The South Pole is Warming Fast. Very Fast

Share

The planet is warming. That we’ve known. It is warming much fastest near the poles. That we’ve also known. Yet just how fast that warming has been still comes as a surprise.

The Arctic has warmed by 0.75 degrees Celsius over the last decade alone, which is a rate much faster than the global average, according to a recent study.

Now comes a new study with some bad news for the southernmost regions. The South Pole, too, is warming much faster than the global average: more than three times faster over the past three decades.

The main authors of the study, a professor of meteorology at the Scalia Laboratory for Atmospheric Analysis in the United States and a climate scientist at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, attributed the rapid pace of warming mainly to natural tropical climate variability intensified by increases in the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases.

The researchers, who analyzed data collected from weather stations at the South Pole and relied on climate models, found that between 1989 and 2018, this southernmost region of the planet warmed by about 1.8 degrees Celsius at a rate of +0.6 degrees Celsius per decade, which is three times the global average. Read more…

Read more

Related News