Surface air temperatures at the bottom of the world have risen three times faster than the global average since the 1990s.
Over that same time period, global average surface temperatures have increased 0.6°C, equating to a rate of 0.2°C per decade. So it’s accurate to say that South Pole temperatures have increased at three times the global average. But it’s important to note that this is a statement about the South Pole, specifically, and not broadly representative of Antarctica as a whole. As illustrated in the figure below, other Antarctic stations recorded a slower rate of warming, while others have even cooled over this time period. Unlike the Arctic, which has seen a widespread and rapid rate of warming, the Antarctic experiences particularly variable weather patterns. These are driven by natural oscillations of regional ocean surface temperatures and atmospheric circulation[2,3,4,5]. [...] REFERENCES - 1- Clem et al. (2020) Record warming at the South Pole during the past three decades, Nature Climate Change - 2- Simpkins et al. (2014) Tropical Connections to Climatic Change in the Extratropical Southern Hemisphere: The Role of Atlantic SST Trends, Journal of Climate - 3- van der Broeke and van Lipzig (2003) Factors Controlling the Near-Surface Wind Field in Antarctica, Monthly Weather Review - 4- Kowk and Comiso (2002) Spatial patterns of variability in Antarctic surface temperature: Connections to the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode and the Southern Oscillation, Geophysical Research Letters - 5- Marshall and Thompson (2016) The signatures of large‐scale patterns of atmospheric variability in Antarctic surface temperatures, JGR Atmospheres