This year’s record-breaking heatwave in Siberia has drawn attention to the fact that the climate crisis is warming the Arctic about twice as fast as the mid-latitudes. But things are also heating up on the other side of Earth. South Pole – the most remote place on Earth, has heated more than three times faster than the global average over the last 30 years. That could have huge implications for the melting of ice sheets, marine life in the region and the rising of global sea levels, a study found. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday, sheds new light on the most remote region on Earth. While scientists have known for years that the outer regions of Antarctica are warming, they previously thought the South Pole, is located deep in its interior, was isolated from rising global temperatures.
“This highlights that global warming is global and it’s making its way to these remote places,” said Kyle Clem, postdoctoral research fellow in Climate Science at the University of Wellington, and lead author of the study. Clem revealed that Antarctica experiences some of the most extreme weather and variability on the planet. It has been known to scientists that the outer regions of Antarctica are warming, but they thought the South Pole, which is located deep in its interior, was isolated from increasing global temperature. Scientists said the main cause of the warming was increasing sea surface temperatures thousands of miles away in the tropics. Over the past 30 years, warming in the western tropical Pacific Ocean — a region near the equator north of Australia and Papua New Guinea — meant there was an increase in warm air being carried to the South Pole.
A climate phenomenon known as Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) can carry surface sea-level temperatures for periods of 20 to 30 years. It’s the same phenomenon that can often strengthen tropical storms and hurricanes, and it also brings warm weather down to the South Pole through a wind system called the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). Those tropic temperatures, along with the still-healing hole in the Ozone layer above Antarctica combine with the greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere by humans to heat the South Pole.
