“Global Impacts of Climate Change, - the Human Dimension: Climate Change and the Polar Regions: bar

The Polar regions are the source of great insight into natural climate change in the Earth system, but while over most of the Arctic, recent rates of atmospheric warming have substantially exceeded the global average; the Antarctic is the only continent where a continent-wide anthropogenic influence on climate cannot yet be identified.

Since the outset of scientific efforts to understand natural climatic changes on Earth and the anthropogenic climate change we have now begun to recognise, the Polar Regions have been at the centre of the debate. Today, these regions are, at once, the source of great insight into natural climate change in the Earth system, and the source of considerable confusion in the apparently counter-intuitive responses they are exhibiting today and may continue to display in the future. The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted many of these issues. While over most of the Arctic, recent rates of atmospheric warming have substantially exceeded the global average; the Antarctic is the only continent where a continent-wide anthropogenic influence on climate cannot yet be identified.

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