Antarctic Heating and Cooling Trends

  • Released Tuesday, July 12, 2005
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Antarctica has been showing some interesting heating and cooling trends over the past 20+ years. Even though the interior of Antarctica is generally cooling, the coastlines (particularly in the western hemisphere) seem to be warming. This data is skin-depth temperatures derived from the thermal IR channel of historical AVHRR data.

Please note, these are preliminary findings and there are errors associated with these trends. Scientists are currently working on ways of minimizing these errors to more precisely determine these trends.

Image depicting the heating and cooling trends over and around Antarctica. Blue indicates cooling trends and red indicates warming trends.

Image depicting the heating and cooling trends over and around Antarctica. Blue indicates cooling trends and red indicates warming trends.

TV (NTSC) resolution image depicting the heating and cooling trends over and around Antarctica.

TV (NTSC) resolution image depicting the heating and cooling trends over and around Antarctica.

Color bar for temperature trends

Color bar for temperature trends

For More Information

See http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/sealevel_feature.html

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. Data provided by Larry Stock

This page was originally published on Tuesday, July 12, 2005.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:56 PM EDT.

Papers used in this visualization

Comiso, J. C., Variability and trends in the Antarctic surface temperatures from in situ and satellite infrared measurements, J. Climate, 13(10), 1674-1696, 2000; Kwok, R, and J.C. Comiso, Spatial patterns of variability in Antarctic surface temperature: Connections to the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode and the Southern Oscillation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 29(14), 10.1029/2002GL015415, 2002; Schneider, D.P., E.J. Steig, and J.C. Comiso, Recent Climate variability in Antarctica from Satellite-derived temperature data, J. Climate, 17, 1569-1583, 2004; King, J.C. and J.C. Comiso, The spatial coherence of interannual temperature variations in the Antarctic Peninsula, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, 1040, doi:10.129/2002GL015580, 2003.

Datasets used in this visualization

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.