New Study: An East Antarctica Region Has Cooled -0.7°C Per Decade Since The 1980s

Scientists extend a 15-station East Antarctica record from 1986 to 2017 and find a -0.7°C per decade cooling (-1.4°C total) until 2006, but no trend from 2006-2017. 

Doran et al (2002) reported “a net cooling on the Antarctic continent between 1966 and 2000”.

Image Source: Doran et al., 2020

Obryk et al. (2020) – with P.T. Doran a co-author – have extended the Doran et al. (2002) record to 2017 and found the -0.7°C cooling that lasted from 1986 to 2000 persisted until 2006. A recovery since 2006 has been observed, but not enough to be documented as statistically significant.

Image Source: Obryk et al., 2020

Turner et al. (2020) report cooling of the Antarctic Peninsula since about 2000 and no net warming in East Antarctica since the early 1980s.

Image Source: Turner et al. (2020)

Hrbáček and Uxa, 2020 report a “significant air temperature decrease started around 2000 along most of the Western AP [Antarctic Peninsula].” Specifically, “the north‐eastern AP region exhibited a MAAT more than 1°C lower in the period 2006–2015 compared to 1996–2005, and autumn (MAM) air temperature was even about 1.5°C lower.”

Image Source: Hrbáček and Uxa, 2020

Fatras et al., 2020 find “a cooling of -0.60°C/decade of the air temperature for Greenwich Island” (Antarctica) from 1998 to 2015.

Image Source: Fatras et al., 2020

In summary, scientists have been consistently documenting significant cooling trends throughout the Antarctic continent in recent decades despite the common media portrayals of rapid Antarctic warming in response to human activities.