South Pole warmed three times the global rate in last 30 years

BUENOS AIRES: At the South Pole, considered the coldest point on Earth, temperatures are rising fast. So fast, in fact, that Kyle Clem and other climate researchers began to worry and wonder whether human-driven climate change was playing a bigger role than expected in Antarctica.

Temperature data shows that the desolate region has warmed at three times the global warming rate over the last three decades up through 2018, the South Pole’s hottest year on record, the researchers report in a study published Monday in Nature Climate Change. Looking at data from 20 weather stations across Antarctica, the South Pole warming rate was seven times higher than the overall average for the continent. “The South Pole seemed to be isolated from what was going on across the rest of the world,” said Clem, who has focused his research at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand on better understanding the Antarctic climate.