MIT Scientists Confirm Antarctica Is Cooling
By Paul Homewood
Just a little clarification is in order on yesterday’s post Global Warming Causes Cooling In Antarctica ( Or Maybe It’s Just Natural!)
The press release from MIT stated that “However, Antarctica has cooled and has gained some ice recently”.
Reader David correctly points out that the Abstract states:
In recent decades, the Arctic has been warming and sea ice disappearing. By contrast, the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has been (mainly) cooling and sea-ice extent growing.
However, it seems that the original press release had it right. The full paper finds that:
Over the last few decades, the two polar regions of our planet have exhibited strikingly different behaviours, as is evident in observed decadal trends in surface air temperature shown in figure 1. The Arctic has warmed, much more than in the global average, primarily in winter, while Arctic sea-ice extent has decreased dramatically. By contrast, the eastern Antarctic and Antarctic plateau have cooled, primarily in summer, with warming over the Antarctic Peninsula and Patagonia . Moreover, sea-ice extent around Antarctica has modestly increased.
In other words, the authors find that most of the Antarctic continent has cooled, rather than just the Southern Ocean, which is quite an important difference.
What we seem to be left with is a paper that uses computer simulations to find that global warming has managed to cool Antarctica, and lead to an increase in sea ice there. This is despite the fact that, according to the IPCC, the vast majority of models predict the opposite.
Pardon me if I am underwhelmed.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The sun warms the oceans.
The oceans distribute the warmth (thankfully)
The poles expel the unused warmth (thankfully)
We know the climate is cyclical, is the sun’s effect cyclical? We do not yet know.
Neither do we know why and how our planet chooses its geographical mechanisms.
We are but toddlers, needing to be breast fed education, but some have skipped straight to teenage, therefore “knowing” it can be explained by the first theory they think they can comprehend!
Homo sapiens is a mere child, Mother Gaia has only just undoing the straps of her apron, wait until she gives it a shake!
We know less than nowt!
Has anyone looked at the underwater volcanic activity in the arctic as a contributing factor to arctic warming? I recall, but cannot find, a number of articles discussing the fact that volcanos could, contrary to long term belief, erupt at great depths as shown in videos. Papers also commented on the fact that the arctic was not well explored regarding volcanos, that at that point in time (early 90’s), there were estimated to be 90+ K volcanos. In subsequent papers, it was estimated that there were over a million volcanos under the arctic. I believe these papers were from NOAA or Woods Hole.
Thanks for reminding me, Frank. I’ve just posted this.
We need time. One season after another, one year after another, with patience Nature will win this war for the skeptic community.
Leif Svalgaard believes in the Livingston – Penn effect, and has good reasons to expect a new “grand minimum” (new Maunder type minimum) starting this cycle.
He’s missing the solar-climate connection though, because he cannot understand the mechanism between a high ratio of small to large spots and low geomagnetic activity. The aa-index shows this connection very clearly.
See the following paper (Jan 2013)
Click to access Svalgaard12.pdf
in particular pg.10. He projects that we’ll have clear evidence of the L-P effect in the next couple of years.
We all know what a new Maunder Minimum would do to the climate, then let’s be patent.
The AGW disease has survived a few decades, but it’s in its last “moments” (years).
So Matt McDoom WAS wrong wrong when he stated in his “Weedy thing” article that Antarctica ‘is warming’, it’s only the Peninsula which is warming.
Probably the most reliable indicator we have of land temperature change in Antarctica comes from UAH satellite data. This covers down to 85 deg South.
The record starts in late 1978. Over the entire period of measurement there’s been virtually no change (-0.02 C). Until the mid 1990s there was a slow cooling trend. This has been followed by a slow warming trend.
Whether this latter warming is part of a longer term oscillation, and cooling will resume again, or whether the warming trend is a response to ‘global warming’ remains to be seen.
recent decades, the Arctic has been warming and sea ice disappearing. By contrast, the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has been (mainly) cooling and sea-ice extent growing.
We argue here that interhemispheric asymmetries in the mean ocean circulation, with sinking in the northern North Atlantic and upwelling around Antarctica, strongly influence the sea-surface temperature (SST) response to anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing, accelerating warming in the Arctic while delaying it in the Antarctic. Furthermore, while the amplitude of GHG forcing has
A piece of there nonsense which has no scientific merit or data to back up what they are suggesting.
In addition Arctic Sea Ice has been stable since 2007 and Arctic summer temperatures have been running below normal of late.