All Of Antarctica Seems To Be Warming

"The climate trend that is raising temperatures across most of the world is warming all of Antarctica despite earlier signs that most of the ice-covered continent has cooled during the past 50 years, researchers are reporting today.

The scientists stop short of claiming with certainty that wind-borne greenhouse gases from global industries on other continents are responsible for Antarctica's warming, but they say their evidence makes them "almost certain" that human activity carries at least some of the blame.

For years the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose scientists track global warming year by year, has reported that greenhouse gases and global warming have clearly hit six of the world's seven continents, but that the evidence from Antarctica is still unclear. West Antarctica is known to be warming strongly, but the climate of the much larger eastern area was said to be cooling, some scientists have argued.

Now the issue has apparently been resolved.

In a report published today in the journal Nature, climatologists Eric J. Steig of the University of Washington and Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies say that for the first time they combined satellite observations over the entire continent with evidence from more than 100 manned and unmanned weather stations both inland and along the continent's coasts to determine climate trends for the past 50 years.

During an hour-long teleconference Wednesday, the scientists said their data clearly shows that on average the entire Antarctic continent has been gradually warming at least since 1957."

ORIGINAL SOURCE: SFGate