CO2 hits record high: Antarctic temperatures do nothing

The terrifying effect of CO2

Feel the panic.

South Pole CO2 levels cross 400 ppm first time in 4 million years!

WASHINGTON: The Earth passed another unfortunate milestone when carbon dioxide levels surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) at the South Pole for the first time in 4 million years, according to US scientists.The South Pole has shown the same, relentless upward trend in carbon dioxide (CO2) as the rest of world, but its remote location means it is the last to register the impacts of increasing emissions from fossil fuel consumption, the primary driver of greenhouse gas pollution, researchers said.

In response, the South pole temperatures “pause”

Satellites show the real warming effect of CO2 on the air over Antarctica (thanks Ken Stewart)

For thousands of years temperatures in West Antarctica have been higher than now.

Graph via WattsUP

Notice how CO2 controls the temperature in Vostok – Not.

The wild swings at the South Pole over the last 12,000 years probably peaked (on average amongst the noise) 4000 to 5000 years ago.

The only thing constant is “change”. Ancient Antarctic witchdoctors would have spent each alternate century prophesizing warming doom followed the next century by cooling doom. Eight thousand years ago temperatures briefly may have hit the magical two-degrees-warmer than “preindustrial” levels. Somehow the West Antarctic ice sheet didn’t melt and the Great Barrier Reef survived.

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REFERENCES

Michelle R. Koutnik, T. J. Fudge, Howard Conway, Edwin D. Waddington, Thomas A. Neumann, Kurt M. Cuffey, Christo Buizert, Kendrick C. Taylor (2016) Holocene accumulation and ice flow near the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide ice core site, Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface.

Fudge, T.J. et al (2016) Variable relationship between accumulation and temperature in West Antarctica for the past 31,000 years, GRL, DOI: 10.1002/2016GL068356

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