"We find that the δ18O of West Antarctic precipitation has increased significantly in the past 50 years, in parallel with the trend in temperature, and was probably more elevated during the 1990s than at any other time during the past 200 years. However, δ18O anomalies comparable to those of recent decades occur about 1% of the time over the past 2,000 years. General circulation model simulations suggest that recent trends in δ18O and climate in West Antarctica cannot be distinguished from decadal variability that originates in the tropics. We conclude that the uncertain trajectory of tropical climate variability represents a significant source of uncertainty in projections of West Antarctic climate and ice-sheet change."
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Antarctic climate 'normal,' Nature study. "Majority of Antarctic warming came during the 1990s in response to El Niño conditions."
4/14/13, "Recent Antarctic Climate, Glacier Changes at the 'Upper Bound' of Normal,," ScienceDaily.com
"New ice core research suggests that, while the changes are dramatic, they cannot be attributed with confidence to human-caused global warming, said Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences.
Previous work by Steig has shown that rapid thinning of Antarctic glaciers was accompanied by rapid warming and changes in atmospheric circulation near the coast. His research with Qinghua Ding, a UW research associate, showed that the majority of Antarctic warming came during the 1990s in response to El Niño conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean.
Their new research suggests the '90s were not greatly different from some other decades -- such as the 1830s and 1940s -- that also showed marked temperature spikes.
"If we could look back at this region of Antarctica in the 1940s and 1830s, we would find that the regional climate would look a lot like it does today, and I think we also would find the glaciers retreating much as they are today," said Steig, lead author of a paper on the findings published online April 14 in Nature Geoscience.
The researchers' results are based on their analysis of a new ice core from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide that goes back 2,000 years, along with a number of other ice core records going back about 200 years. They found that during that time there were several decades that exhibited similar climate patterns as the 1990s.
The most prominent of these in the last 200 years -- the 1940s and the 1830s -- were also periods of unusual El Niño activity like the 1990s. The implication, Steig said, is that rapid ice loss from Antarctica observed in the last few decades, particularly the '90s, "may not be all that unusual."
The same is not true for the Antarctic Peninsula, the part of the continent closer to South America, where rapid ice loss has been even more dramatic and where the changes are almost certainly a result of human-caused warming, Steig said.
But in the area where the new research was focused, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, it is more difficult to detect the evidence of human-caused climate change. While changes in recent decades have been unusual and at the "upper bound of normal," Steig said, they cannot be considered exceptional."...via Junk Science
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Above normal growth of Antarctic Sea Ice is translated as "melting" by the CO2 terror crowd:
.
4/14/13, "Sunday Times Reports Record Ice Growth As Record “Melt”," Steven Goddard, Real Science
"Antarctic sea ice area has been increasing and above normal for more than 500 consecutive days, so the experts chime in with a claim of record melt.
[graph and linked data show thru 2013]
The
Weddell Sea (adjacent to the Antarctic Peninsula) had double the normal
amount of sea ice this summer. That is because it was exceptionally
cold."
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commenter
"Jef
It’s amazing to me that one part of Antarctica is warming because of “natural” variations and the other is because of manmade global warming. How does that work?"
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Ed. note: Wow! The big, ugly white patch you see defacing this post on the section with an Antarctic graph was put there by google approved hackers who've been with me for several years. They can't stand the fact that CO2 terror was made up and is falling apart. They have a particular problem with anything posted by Steven Goddard.