The Antarctic Peninsula, among the fastest warming places on Earth last century, has since cooled due to natural swings in the local climate, scientists say, but researchers have cautioned this does not imply warming of the planet has stopped.

Key points: Shift to colder winds and more sea ice since 1990 brought a chill to the region

Shift to colder winds and more sea ice since 1990 brought a chill to the region Shifts in wind that led to cooling could be from stabilisation in ozone hole, study finds

Shifts in wind that led to cooling could be from stabilisation in ozone hole, study finds Warming linked to break-up of ancient ice shelves

Rapid warming until the late 1990s on the peninsula — which snakes up towards South America — triggered the break-up of ancient ice shelves, which are vast expanses of ice floating on the sea at the end of glaciers.

The warming also contributed to the decline in some penguin colonies.

However, a shift to colder winds and more sea ice since then has brought a chill to the region despite the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, according to the Nature article.

"The increase of greenhouse gases … is being overwhelmed in this part of the Antarctic" by natural variations in the local climate, said the British Antarctic Survey's (BAS) lead author John Turner.

"We're certainly not saying that global warming has stopped. On the contrary, we're highlighting the complexity of climate change."

Since about 1998, local air temperatures have fallen about 0.5 degree Celsius a decade, roughly the rate at which they had previously been warming since about 1950.

Stabilisation of the ozone hole over Antarctica may partly explain the shift in winds that led to the cooling, the study said.

Long-term changes have year-to-year variability: researcher

The build-up of greenhouse gases, mainly from the global burning of fossil fuels, means the cooling may be just a blip in a corner of Antarctica.

At a Paris summit in December, almost 200 governments agreed on a deal yet to rein in global warming. ( Supplied: AMC )

"[The research] is a good example of how the long-term changes in our climate also have a layer of year-to-year variability on top that can cause some decades to warm particularly quickly and others to apparently not warm at all," Australian National University Associate Professor Nerilie Abram said.

Temperatures were likely to start rising again and could gain 3C to 4C by 2100, Mr Turner said.

At a Paris summit in December, almost 200 governments agreed the strongest deal yet to rein in global warming, aiming to phase out fossil fuels by 2100.

US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who does not believe in man-made warming, said he would pull out if elected.

On the Antarctic Peninsula, about 10 ice shelves, from the Jones to the Wilkins, have retreated sharply or disintegrated in recent decades.

The splintering of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002 inspired the opening scene of a Hollywood disaster movie about climate change, The Day After Tomorrow, where a vast crack destroys a US scientific camp.

In the real world, the worry is that far bigger ice shelves further south in Antarctica will also break up, allowing vast glaciers to slide more quickly into the sea and add to a rise in ocean levels.

Real threat is ocean warming: Leeds researcher

On the Antarctic Peninsula, in 2014, scientists spotted a new crack tens of kilometres long on the Larsen C ice shelf.

"The future of the Larsen C is in the balance," said David Vaughan, director of science at BAS, who said it had probably not yet reached a point of no return.

Some other scientists said a rise in ocean temperatures, which are gnawing away at Antarctica's icy coastline from below, was more important for the rise in sea level than the air temperatures studied by Mr Turner.

"The real threat is ocean warming," said Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds.

ABC/Reuters