Six weeks of climate data: Southern Polar Region #1, 0° to 30° East

And so we begin the regions of the Antarctic Circle. Lots of land compared to the Arctic, but very few people. This region had 437 readings total from only 13 weather stations, many of them not operational continuously from 1995 to 2010. Some seasons get no readings at all. In the Arctic, "sparse coverage" meant less than 2,000 seasonal readings in the 56 year period. In the Antarctic, only one of our twelve slices rises to the level of 2,000.

One interesting thing about this region is that it will get a lot of data from the South Pole. There are several stations at the South Pole, but they didn't necessarily get read every season. In the Antarctic, high numbers of readings are found in regions with ice shelves. This region only has that one small inlet, and the eight big dark dots correspond to the area around that.

In the Southern Hemisphere, the new year starts with the Summer data. The Antarctic readings are much colder than the Arctic, and in region #1, there is no way to say there was a warming trend. The warmest Summers stay relatively static and coldest and median jump around more, but there is no noticeable trend either up or down.

The warmest Fall trend is once again static, but the median and coldest trends show regional cooling.

Winter looks like Fall. The median and lowest temperatures show cooling trends.

Spring has a static trend in terms of record warm seasons during our intervals, but the median reading plummeted in this most recent interval and the lowest temperatures took a dive in the late 1990s.

There were a total of 48 readings, 12 in each season. Intervals can finish 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th, and ties are possible.

Most warmest readings: The three 20th Century intervals, 1955-1975, 1975-1988 and 1988-1999, all have four.
Most 2nd warmest readings: 1975-1988 has 5 and 1955-1975 has 4.
Most 3nd warmest readings: 1955-1975 with 5, 1988-1999 with 4.
Most coldest readings: 1999-2010 with 9.

Is this region warming from interval to interval? No, it's been cooling, especially in the most recent era.

Is the rate of cooling increasing? The rate definitely jumps at the turn of the century.

So this data gives us our first slice of regional data that shows an actual cooling trend. We will see this pattern repeated several times in the Antarctic. Some might argue that this shows global warming isn't happening. I would agree that "global warming" is misleading, but the regions that are cooling or are remaining relatively static can also be used to show the regions with warming trends may very well have them because of proximity to humans.

This afternoon, Region #2 of the Antarctic Circle, another region with a cooling trend.