The continent of Antarctica is a difficult hunting ground for climate apocalypse fanatics since there has been barely any overall warming over the last 70 years. The exception is West Antarctica where there has been some local climate variation, possibly helped by significant geothermal activity. Of course this is enough for a scare or two, so don’t expect to see reported in mainstream media some startling new evidence showing significant cooling in West Antarctica starting in the early 1990s, with temperatures falling by 0.93°C each decade from 1999-2018, a total of 2°C over the 20 years.
In a paper published by the American Meteorological Society, a group of international scientists note the “statistically significant” rate of temperature decline with the strongest cooling occurring in spring. During this season, the temperature fell by a massive 1.84°C every decade between 1999-2018. In the winter, the decadal fall was 1.19°C. The cooling was measured by a number of databases, while an accurate consistent record was collected from the Marie Byrd weather station. Despite some differences in cooling, all the databases are said to have shared similar changes across seasons and throughout the region. The graph below plots the temperature record at Marie Byrd back to the 1950s.
So what has caused this precipitous temperature decline? As we have seen in many science papers, whenever temperatures fall, consideration of rising human-caused carbon dioxide levels is put to one side. The scientists come down firmly on the side of natural causes, with the changes mostly attributed to tropical Pacific influences. In particular, sea surface temperatures have dropped in the eastern Pacific equatorial region over the last 20 years. A reference to “atmospheric teleconnections” refers to the natural processes at work in the climate as heat is transferred around the planet in a not-fully-understood process involving ocean and atmospheric currents.
Almost needless to say, none of this cooling was forecast by climate models. The authors suggest that models are an “important tool” in making future projections of future climate changes over Antarctica. But they admit that the models did not pick up the recent significant cooling in West Antarctica. There is said to be “no robust agreement” among the models on the important sea temperatures driving the western Antarctica air temperatures. Tropical Pacific climate oscillation is still an important source of uncertainty in future projections of West Antarctica air temperatures, it is observed.
Was it ever thus? Forty years of hopelessly inaccurate temperature forecasts, along with unrealistic climate ‘tipping’ impacts driven by ridiculous suggestions that the temperature will rise by 4°C in less than 80 years, is hardly a record that inspires confidence. The recent appearance of clickbait attributions trying to pin individual weather events on human activities is little more than a scientific joke. These politicised attempts to measure the unmeasurable are a complete waste of time and money, the uncharitable might note. Not least because the models are corrupted by the notion promoted by the UN’s IPCC that all or most global warming since 1900 is caused by humans burning fossil fuel. This might seem an increasingly implausible suggestion in the light of much science including this latest paper on the recent dramatic drop in Antarctica temperatures.
Despite the refusal of Antarctica to show any significant warming, the climate apocalypse circus regularly rides into town to drum up catastrophe business. Last September, the headlines were full of a “mind-blowing” fall in winter sea ice to 17 million square kilometres. The BBC said it showed a “worrying new benchmark” for a region that once seemed resistance to global warming. The “mind-blowing” remark was attributed to Dr. Walter Meier, who monitors sea ice with the Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC). He added that it was “far outside anything we’ve seen”. Inexplicably, he seemed to forget that he was part of an earlier team that had reviewed photos from the 1960s Nimbus weather satellites that showed similar levels of ice in 1966. Just seven years ago, Meier held the view that extreme highs and lows of Antarctica sea ice “are not unusual”.
Of course, the 2023 low sea ice story has moved on. In mainstream media it would be considered very bad form to note that according to the latest figures from the NSIDC, the start of summer in October saw below-trend ice melt – 903,000 square kilometres compared with the average of 985,000 sq kms. Up in the Arctic, pickings have been thin for some years following the small cyclical recovery in sea ice that set in around 2014. As the winter takes hold, the NSIDC reports that the ice has increased “at a faster than average pace”. The freeze is said to have been particularly rapid along the Siberian seas where the ice cover expanded to the coast by the end of last month. Things are not look good for Sir David Attenborough’s claim in last year’s Frozen Planet II that summer sea ice could all be gone in 12 years. Over at the Greenland ice sheet, the latest information from the Danish Polar Portal shows winter ice growing back faster than the 1981-2010 average.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Pesky old Antarctica not playing ball with the models, perhaps failed physicist Michael Mann will cancel the entire continent.
It’s time for Michael Mann to turn in his hockey stick.
Or put it where the Sun don’t shine.
Oh you mean the same Mann who would not reveal his data, methodology or computer code for his Hockey Stick graph that tried to tell the world that temperatures had suddenly shot up in the twentieth century all because of HUMANS. Ofcourse once a certain Steve McIntyre like a dog with a bone figured out what was actually going on statistically without any help from Mann it was revealed the Hockey Stick Graph was not representative of the real world after all and was quietly dropped from IPPC reports and news programs.
Alas it has sneaked into the IPCC propaganda again.
Oh really?—-Just shows what most of us on here already know that this is NOT about science and NEVER was.
See, rhe climate IS changing!
There’s a good reason they changed the term from global warming to climate change.
It’s clearly Khunt’s ULEZ expansion wot saved the day!
Yep, because warming had stopped. As Climategate emails revealed “We cannot account for the lack of warming and it is a travesty that we can’t”——–OfCourse the public would never have known any of that stuff if the emails had not been hacked. So just as well they were.
Yes it’s called Spring,Summer, Autumn and Winter.
‘—the temperature fell by a massive 1.84C degrees every decade from 1999-2018.’
Sensation seeking twaddle. Two decades!
As opposed to the rational climate catastrophising the BBC etc place on every single weather event!
Straw man! Where did I mention the BBC? ‘Every decade’ when there are two of them??? That’s my point.
Lovely strawman. The difference is Chris Morris isn’t seeking to freeze to death an entire country of tropically evolved apes on the alter of trendy politics. Funny global warming that doesn’t warm the coolest place on earth though isn’t it.
A 3 degree C fall in two decades is in reality a huge decrease, which can only be described as very rapid cooling. Do some reading on climate history (I recommend HH Lamb who did great work in this field) and you will see that that is so.
They timed the Covid lockdowns in 2020 to coincide with the peak of infections and the end of winter flu season. Climate alarmists will claim that Command and Control Net Zero Policies timed for 2015-50 are responsible for declining temperatures in the coming decades.
I doubt that. They will insist global boiling is still apace, but the temperature recording system is somehow not measuring it, probably because the heat is magically plunging to the ocean depths without passing through the upper layer. Normal weather patterns, don’t forget, like extremes are ’consistent with’ climate change.
No cause monger likes to see the aim of their cause being achieved. What then would they do? The cash-flow would dry up – their control-freak trip would end.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/my-old-college-and-a-green-light-for-brainlessness/
I quite enjoy a good takedown of eco-nuttery.
Yes I had a look at that ———Isn’t it peculiar that you never see any questioning of the so called science, which is really not science at all and is actually only models full of assumptions? But to all of those who claim they “follow the science” I say ——-In science you question EVERYTHING. If you don’t, it isn’t science I am afraid. It is POLITICS.
To be precise, it is an ideology, a faith based belief system, taken up by politicians.
Thank you excellent article absolutely spot on.
It is clearly due to better insulation in recent years so that the Western Antarctic heat islands around the settlements are having a lesser effect that previously.
Sorry if that is sounding a bit muffled; it is difficult to speak clearly with your tongue in your cheek.
And they have installed heat pumps in the buildings which is extracting heat from the air outside to make it warm inside, thus having a cooling effect.
Diesel generators have been replaced by wind and solar, they have converted to Battery Electric snowmobiles and the personnel have gone vegan.
See – Net Zero is possible.
I’ve never heard an adequate explanation of how an “average temperature” is calculated or why it matters. Is it the average of daily highs and lows? Hourly temperature 24/7/365? I’d imagine that the method of calculation can often determine the outcome when the difference is less than 2 degrees.
Somethings lose their meaning when you average them and temperature is one of those things. Temperature is not an amount of anything. It is a “condition”. ——-But as it happens it isn’t “average temperature” that gets used in climate. It is “temperature anomaly”, which is entirely different. ——-The other thing to remember is that we have not had thermometers all over the world recording temperatures. They were mostly in the wealthy western countries, hardly any in poor countries, and none in the oceans that make up 70% of the planet. Plus, those thermometers that we actually had were dogged by inaccuracy problems and were never designed for detecting temperature changes of hundredths of a degree. And it is hundredths of a degree that is talked about when claims of “warmest year” etc are made.
Global average is obtained by averaging readings from designated weather stations around the globe, and from readings taken on ships, and recently automatic buoys scattered about.
Using readings from different times over the day they can get a daily average temperature at each location, then average these averages for the global average.
Meaningless. To make it even more meaningless, there is no consistency. The thermometers are not calibrated to a single standard, reference instrument, they have different degrees of accuracy depending on age, manufacture, and siting, some have been moved to new sites, or replaced with new instruments, or their environment has changed since installed. Some are in hot-spots such as built up areas or at airports.
To allow for such discrepancies they use a computer programme with algorithms (guess work) to make ’corrections’ and ‘adjustments’.
This then allows them to calculate global warming to within a hundredth of a degree Celsius, using a specially constructed Global Mean Temperature Anomaly calculation.
Cross their palms with silver and they will tell you next week’s winning lottery numbers.
You forgot to mention the “adjustments” which typically cool the past and warm the present. Temperature data has been fiddled about with more times than a hookers knickers. ——-Most of the alleged warming is actually in the fiddling about of the data.
Yesterday afternoon on the Nana Akua show I saw GB News resident climate alarmist, Jim Dale not get the easy ride he usually does as there was a chap on there who actually knew what he was talking about and left Jim (I am a meteorologist don’t you know) Dale with steam coming out of his ears, when he quoted the actual IPPC and bits of climate data that Dale and the climate establishment hate you seeing. The data revealed what many of us on this website already knew, because we actually read books instead of tuning into the BBC and SKY News Climate Show, and that data reveals that there is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event anywhere in the world. Not Storms, not droughts, not floods, NOTHING. ———Dear Mr Dale, When none of what you say can be falsified you are not dealing in science mate, and I am not at all surprised that you say ridiculous things like “the temperature is the hottest ever” —–The temperature of WHAT? And are you aware that the thermometer was only invented in the 1700’s. So who was measuring temperatures in the 1600’s? The answer is No one. But then he wheels out his “Ice Core” nonsense. But as everyone on this website already knows, historical proxies like ice cores reveal no correlation at all between CO2 and temperatures and it has been colder when there was 10 and sometimes 20 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere. ————The one big problem Chris Morrison and people like myself have though is that most ordinary people will get their information about the “climate crisis” from BBC or SKY etc and not so many will have seen Nana Akua yesterday afternoon and will have read many reports like this on the Daily Sceptic. ——-It is time we had another “Great Global Warming Swindle” type program on a mainstream channel to bring people right up to date with the climate scam.
They’ve called in Mystic Meg Ferguson to tweak the models
It has been a core tenet of the climate loonies that BOTH poles would warm as a result of global warming. The Arctic has – as it does on a cyclical basis totally unrelated to CO2. And indeed, they claim that the West Antarctic ice sheet (underlaid by massive geothermal activity) is melting. Which clearly it will not be with this cooling.
Anyone remember the huge hot spot in the Troposphere that the loonies said would happen.
Again. It didn’t.
For most of Earth’s history the geological record shows there have been no polar ice caps. And whereas even one polar ice cap is not usual, two is rare.
The notion that the presence of ice caps is normal, and melting is abnormal, is inconsistant with the historic evidence.
Having two ice caps, means the Earth’s climate is in an unusually cold period.
If the polar caps are melting, this indicates a return to Earth’s more usual climate conditions.
Antarctica is 40% larger than the continent of Europe. Apart from a handful of weather stations on the West coast – therefore a warmer region – there is no direct instrument measurement of about 99% of the continent, yet climatists tell us with absolute confidence they know its temperature to an accuracy of a hundredth of a degree – and yes! It’s getting warmer. In fact global warming is happening more and faster than anywhere else except the Arctic where there is also a paucity of direct instrument measurement.