Attempting to reinforce the climate crisis narrative, a recent
high temperature record in Antarctica has been misleadingly ballyhooed as an
example of global warming by the world’s largest media outlets – New York
Times, BBC, the Guardian, etc. Although
the NY Times tries to sell their paper with the slogan “The Truth is Worth It”,
their misleading articles suggest you should spend your money elsewhere. These media giants seem more intent on scaring
the public and manufacturing a false climate crisis, than educating the public
about the real physics that cause weather changes causing Antarctica’s
temperature record!
The NY Times wrote, “Antarctica,
the coldest, windiest and driest continent on Earth, set a record high temperature on
Thursday, underscoring global warming” But the fact that Antarctica is the
coldest place on earth, has nothing to do with a temperature record at a single weather station,
Esperanza. Esperanza
is located at the warmest, most northerly part of the mountainous Antarctica
peninsula. Esperanza is most sensitive to El Nino warming. It most sensitive to
the southward flow of warm moist subtropical winds. And Esperanza’s topography always
amplifies temperatures when winds from the northwest cause foehn wind events.
What happened at Esperanza has nothing to do with Antarctica’s overall climate
trends, never mind any global warming trend.
The Guardian wrote, Antarctica “is one of the fastest warming
places on earth, heating by almost 3°C [5.4°F] over the past 50 years”. However,
the Guardian hides the fact they are using zombie data. Recent research shows a
cooling
trend since the year 2000 and that contradicts any CO2 driven global
warming theory.
In the 2016 peer-reviewed paper “Absence of 21st century Warming
on Antarctic Peninsula consistent with Natural Variability”, Antarctic climate experts
documented that from 1979–1997, Antarctic had indeed experienced the globe’s
fastest warming temperatures, increasing by 3.2 °C [5.8 °F] per century. In contrast,
from 1999–2014, temperatures then decreased at a rate 4.7 °C [8.5 °F} per
century. This strong cooling trend is rarely reported or referred to by media
alarmists. Dishonestly, the Guardian
ignores the recent cooling trends to suggest a recent one day Esperanza temperature
record is “a sign that warming in Antarctica is happening much faster than
global average” and “is the foreshadowing of what is to come.” Likewise the NY Times dishonestly claims, “The
high temperature is in keeping with the earth’s overall warming trend, which is
in large part caused by emissions
of greenhouse gases.
The Guardian’s author Graham
Readfearn engages in his typical alarmist distortions to write, “Previous research from 2012 found
the current rate of warming in the region was almost
unprecedented over the past 2000 years.”
Really? Almost unprecedented? The paper he
refers to actually stated, “Although warming of the
northeastern Antarctic Peninsula began around 600 years ago, the high rate of
warming over the past century is unusual (but not unprecedented)
in the context of natural climate variability over the past two millennia.
The BBC gets
the prize for going completely off the rails stating, “Scientists warn that
global warming is causing so much melting at the South Pole, it will eventually
disintegrate - causing the global sea level to rise by at least three metres
(10ft) over centuries.” But there has been no warming trend at the south pole nor
in east Antarctica as exemplified by the Dumont D’Urville
weather station.
For
those readers who only trust peer reviewed papers, I suggest reading, “Foehn
Event Triggered by an Atmospheric River Underlies Record-Setting Temperature Along
Continental Antarctica” which thoroughly investigated the causes
of the previous 2015 record-setting temperature at Esperanza.
What is a foehn event? Foehn events cause rapid extreme temperature
jumps simply due to changes in the air pressure as winds descend from a mountain
top. During the 2015 foehn event, Esperanza’s daily temperature jumped from 0°C [32°F] 2 days
before, to a record setting 17.5°C
[63.5°F].
Elsewhere, Antarctic foehn winds are common and have
been extensively studied, often raising maximum temperatures by 10+°C [18+°F] above normal.
As seen in figure “c” below, weather systems in 2015 had driven a warm
and humid subtropical air flow from the northwest onto the northern Antarctic Peninsula.
That warm air flow raised the western peninsula’s temperatures above normal. Then
those winds rose up and over the peninsula’s mountain range amplifying
temperatures even further on the east side of the peninsula. As the air rose, its
water vapor condensed, both releasing precipitation and releasing latent heat that
had further warmed the air. As that warmer
and drier air passed over the mountain crest and descended onto Esperanza, temperatures
warmed further as air pressure increased temperatures at a rate of over 5°F for every 1000-foot
drop in altitude. A typical foehn event.
 |
| Warm humid atmospheric river headed to Antarctic Peninsula 2015 |
As happens in all the earth’s mountainous regions, foehn winds warm
the air due to simple physics and well-established gas laws. Warming does not
require any added heat from the sun or CO2. During Esperanza’s 2015
record warmth, temperatures had hovered around 0.5°C [32.9 °F] the day
before. But as winds from the northwest increased air flow over the peninsula’s
mountains, those foehn winds increased Esperanza’s temperatures by 17.5 °C [31.5 °F]. Those
same dynamics were in play during the February 2020 record temperature.
In contrast to several paragraphs trying to implicate global warming,
the Guardian did offer one sentence hinting at a foehn wind warming,
quoting Dr. Renwick: “higher temperatures in the region tended to coincide with
strong northwesterly winds moving down
mountain slopes – a feature of the weather patterns around Esperanza in recent
days.”
Also a quote from Dr Steve Rintoul, an Antarctic expert at CSIRO, admitted:
“This is a record from only a single station, but it is in the context
of what’s happening elsewhere and is more evidence that as the planet warms we
get more warm records and fewer cold records.”
But Rintoul is not sharing all the facts. The current context for
the Antarctica Peninsula is that for over a decade it has experienced
cooling temperatures driven by natural variability. In fact, glaciers in Esperanza’s
region have also expanded. Esperanza’s
record temperature simply happened due to foehn winds despite a cooling trend. Unfortunately,
the media would rather scare the public to promote a climate crisis, than honestly
educate them about the causes of natural climate variability.
Jim
Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus
and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s
Journey to Climate Skepticism
Contact:
naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net
