Antarctic Sea Ice Grows Despite Global Warming—But It Won’t Last

Scientists have suggested for years now that the effects of a warming planet won't show up in a uniform fashion across the globe—different locations won't see glaciers retreat or sea levels rise at the same rate. Some places are particularly confusing because they show signs that seem backward to one's expectations for a hotter Earth. One of the those confusing outliers for climatologists has been the sea ice off Antarctica. While the amount of sea ice in the Arctic has been trending downward, Antarctic sea ice has actually expanded even as the area has warmed (and as ice shelves collapsed on the continent). This week, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jiping Liu and Judith Curry put forth an explanation for this paradox. But, they say, the ice growth probably won't continue. Liu and Curry looked through 60 years of temperature and precipitation readings to find an explanation for the increase of sea ice in the warming world, and showed that precipitation increased over Antarctica from 1950 to the the present.