Human activity, El Nino warming West Antarctic: study

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Human activity and the El Nino weather pattern over the last century have warmed West Antarctica, part of the world’s coldest continent, according to a study based on four years of collecting ice core data.

The West Antarctic warmed in response to higher temperatures in the tropical Pacific, which itself has been warming due to weather patterns like a major El Nino event from 1939 to 1942 and greenhouse emissions from cars and factories, according to the study.

“An increasingly large part of the signal is becoming due to human activity,” said the study’s lead author David Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The study appeared on Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Previous studies had showed the West Antarctic had cooled partly due to winds caused by depletion of the ozone layer.

Reuters