The Antarctic Peninsula

The warming of the Antarctic Peninsula makes its way to blogs on occasion, so I decided to check Southern Ocean SST East and West of it. Refer to Figure 1. The latitudes of both data are 60 to 80S. Longitudes for the East (Blue) curve are 40 to 65W and for the West (Red) curve they’re 65 to 90W. The data have been smoothed with an 85-month running average filter. Note the sharp decline in SST both East and West of the peninsula, starting in the late 1990S.


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Figure 1

In Figure 2, the period has been shortened from January 1979 to May 2008. There is no filtering. The final peaks in both curves are mid-year 1998.

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Figure 2

SOURCE

Data is Smith and Reynolds Extended Reconstructed SST, ERSST.v2, available through the NOAA/NCDC NOMADS.

http://nomads.ncdc.noaa.gov/#climatencdc