In recent days, the news of the highest temperature ever observed at the South Pole has been frequent. This time, however, it's not just Antarctica that is being observed over a large area - a new report by New Zealand scientists suggests that the more remote Antarctic poles have warmed more than three times the global average over the past 30 years. The study suggests that this period of warming is largely driven by natural tropical climate variability and may intensify with the increase in greenhouse gases.

Since 2020, the topic of warming in Antarctica has aroused wide concern in the world. On February 7, the World Meteorological Organization announced that a temperature of 18.3 ° C had been observed in Esperanza, an Argentine scientific research station on the Antarctic Peninsula. The previous record was 17.5 ° C observed in March 2015; Just two days later, Brazilian scientists measured 20.75 degrees Celsius on Seymour Island, the northern tip of Antarctica, again setting a new record for the continent.

Scientists believe the Antarctic climate shows some of the largest regional temperature trends on the planet - warming and thinning ice sheets over much of the South West Pole and Antarctic Peninsula in the late 20th century and continue to this day. By contrast, the Polar regions, located in the interior of more remote, high-latitude continents, remained cold until the 1980s, when they began to warm significantly. These trends are influenced by both natural and man-made climate change, but scientists have not been able to fully understand the effects of each factor alone.

With that in mind, Researcher Keller Kramer of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and colleagues examined warming trends at the poles by analyzing weather station data, lattice observations and climate models. The team found that the warming was mainly driven by the tropics. A warm climate in the western tropical Pacific is associated with a negative decadal oscillation in the Pacific, which increases the transport of warm air to the Antarctic poles. The stronger winds around the South Pole are caused by the change of the annular mode in the southern hemisphere to a positive phase, which further reinforces the warming trend. Researchers believe that these atmospheric changes along the coast of Antarctica are an important mechanism driving climate anomalies inland.

These warming trends are unlikely to be the result of natural climate change alone, the team said, reflecting the role of man-made warming and large-scale tropical variability in Antarctic climate.