AGU: Geophysical Research Letters

 

Editors' Highlight

Ice core records are used to extract Antarctic temperatures over the past two centuries

The climate of the Antarctic continent is the most poorly observed of anywhere on Earth. Meteorological records in Antarctica are few and far between, and routine observations began only in the late 1950s. Schneider et al. (2006) sought to extend the instrumental record of Antarctic temperature with a reconstruction using water stable isotope records from high-resolution, precisely dated ice cores. Both direct and reconstructed temperatures indicate a large interannual to decadal-scale variability, with temperature anomalies on the Antarctic continent out of phase with anomalies on the Antarctic Peninsula. Comparisons between the records of mean temperature from the Southern Hemisphere and the authors' reconstruction suggested that at longer timescales, temperature changes in Antarctica paralleled changes in the Southern Hemisphere as a whole. The authors' reconstruction indicated that Antarctic temperatures have increased by about 0.2°C since the late nineteenth century. Moreover, because Antarctic temperatures are in-phase with Southern Hemisphere mean temperature trends, the authors proposed that as global temperatures rise, so too will Antarctic temperatures, in accordance with model-based predictions.

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