Until recently thought to be relatively untouched by global warming, Antarctica is ultimately much more sensitive than expected, according to a study published Thursday, September 7, in the journal Nature Climate Change, which could lead scientists to adapt their climate models.
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While the Arctic is clearly paying the price of climate change with a planned disappearance of the sea ice in summer, at the South Pole, Antarctica still seemed relatively preserved. This would in fact have to be qualified seriously because a new study updates the evolution of temperatures on the white continent.
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Mathieu Casado, CNRS researcher at the climate and environmental sciences laboratory, and his colleagues used ice cores to reconstruct the climate of the last thousand years. ” What we have seen in recent years is much greater warming than in the last thousand years, something that is outside of natural variability, he explains. We do not have as significant an amplification as in the Arctic, probably because of the presence of a fairly massive ice continent and also the differences in atmospheric circulation between the Arctic and Antarctica. But we are observing a polar amplification which a priori will have consequences on the speed of warming in Antarctica compared to the global average. »
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the planet is warming by a sixth of a degree every ten years. It was thought until now that the pace was barely higher in Antarctica. This new study therefore revises the estimate upwards, it would rather be between a fifth and a third of an additional degree per decade, a result which will feed into the next IPCC reports.
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