Ohio University — Science Daily — June 30, 2020
The South Pole has been warming at more than three times the global average over the past 30 years, according to research led by Ohio University professor Ryan Fogt and OHIO alumnus Kyle Clem. Their paper was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Between 1989 and 2018, the South Pole had warmed by about 1.8 degrees Celsius over the past 30 years — at a rate of +0.6 degrees Celsius per decade, three times the global average. The study found that this warming was mainly driven by natural tropical climate variability, especially warm ocean temperatures in the western tropical Pacific Ocean that changed winds in the South Atlantic and increased the delivery of warm air to the South Pole.
Clem and Fogt argue that these warming trends were unlikely the result of natural climate change alone, emphasizing the effects of added anthropogenic warming on top of the large tropical climate signal. Most of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula experienced warming and ice-sheet thinning during the late 20th century, while the South Pole — located in the remote and high-altitude continental interior — cooled until the 1980s and has since warmed substantially.