The Southwest Atlantic To West Antarctic Peninsula Region Has Been Cooling Since The 1990s

Scientists continue to document a sea surface cooling in the vast waters above Antarctica.

As recently as a few thousand years ago the Sub-Antarctic (South Georgia) region was 5 to 10°C warmer than it is today (Xia et al., 2020).

Image Source: Xia et al., 2020

About 1,000 years ago (the Medieval Warm Period) Antarctica was still “substantially warmer than present” and the Southern Ocean waters were sufficiently ice-free that elephant seals could breed in the Ross Sea, or near the coast of south-central Antarctica’s Victoria Land.

Today this region is so much colder and the sea ice so thick that elephant seals must travel 2,400 kilometers north of where they used to breed 1,000 years ago just to find sea ice-free waters (Koch et al., 2019Hall et al., 2006).

Image Source: Koch et al., 2019

Image Source: Hall et al., 2006

And now some new studies (Atkinson et al., 2022, Toolsee and Lamont, 2022) document a cooling/non-warming  trend in the southwest Atlantic and/or Sub-Antarctic region has commenced in the last few decades. The cooling follows a long-term warming trend that lasted from the 1920s to 1990s.

Image Source: Atkinson et al., 2022
Image Source: Toolsee and Lamont, 2022

20 responses to “The Southwest Atlantic To West Antarctic Peninsula Region Has Been Cooling Since The 1990s”

  1. The Southwest Atlantic to West Antarctic Peninsula Region Has Been Cooling Since The 1990s – Climate- Science.press

    […] The Southwest Atlantic To West Antarctic Peninsula Region Has Been Cooling Since The 1990s […]

  2. Yonason

    “Today this region is so much colder and the sea ice so thick that elephant seals must travel 2,400 kilometers north of where they used to breed 1,000 years ago just to find sea ice-free waters.”

    Talk about “climate refugees.”

  3. RoHa

    So does this mean we are doomed, very doomed, or extremely doomed?

  4. drumphish

    Get your mask on.

    The mask cultists are the most brainwashed brainless suckers the planet has ever seen.

    Next in line are the warmunists, it is the coldest spring I’ve ever seen in these parts, not one day in the eighties, not one day in the nineties, it is definitely a cool down, the weather says so. You’re a sucker if you believe in global warming due to carbon emissions by those evil humans.

    Ain’t happening here. It is 33 degrees and snowing, just miserable weather.

    Where’s the sun?

    The asparagus will be here soon.

    1. Yonason

      “The asparagus will be here soon.”

      mmmmm, fresh asparagus! Yum!

  5. Climate Justice – Newsfeed Hasslefree Allsort

    […] Related: The Southwest Atlantic To West Antarctic Peninsula Region Has Been Cooling Since The 1990s […]

  6. Richard Greene

    Good article.
    The Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere climate change in the past 50 years has been different. Climate science is obviously not settled.

  7. Weekly Climate and Energy New Roundup #505 – Watts Up With That?

    […] The Southwest Atlantic To West Antarctic Peninsula Region Has Been Cooling Since The 1990s […]

  8. Elephant seals in the Ross Sea – what more proof needed that MWP was real and global? | Odyssey

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