Talk:Climate of Antarctica

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William M. Connolley 12:58, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)) A date and verification for the 14.6 at hope bay (== esperanza) would be good.


Contents

[edit] Getting text to wrap

I have tried wrapping the text round the figure in the 'Ice Shelves' section (by putting '|right' after the pixels command (as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Picture_tutorial), but this doesn't work.... How does one get the text to wrap?Duncan.france 09:33, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Precipitation

Surprisingly for this topic, there is no mention of amount of precipitation, other than the climate 'is dry'....

Can someone add in the details of annual snowfalls? Duncan.france 09:36, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

There is information under "Precipitation", although it is in the form of mm of water. For comparison, there is less than 8 inches (20 cm) of snowfall at the South Pole each year. (SEWilco 17:08, 23 May 2005 (UTC))
Dry for many parts of Antartica is surely the wrong word, Precipitation is low but so is evaporation. Dejvid 15:23, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Do not user User: in text

Direct User: ref removed in text:


You get to be in Wikipedia:Wikipedians_with_articles and your own page, but do not put your User: link there either. The User: stuff does not go along when the content is exported.

Fplay 00:27, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

lowest temp -89.4 or -89.6?

[edit] Minimum temperature

I changed the minimum temperature at Vostok to -89.2°C. The original version of this page had it as -89.4°C, and it was changed to -89.6, with no explanation given, here: history. The original entry of -89.4°C comes from US government sources that have converted the official record from -89.2°C to -128.6°F, rounded to -129°F, then converted from the rounded value back to -89.4°C (this is given in the Army Corps of Engineers' book, Weather and climate extremes, 1997). I did not find what seemed to be a reliable source online, but this value is given at this site, and Extremes on Earth; it is also the value given in the Antarctica article on other language wikipedias. On an original research note, I have also seen a photo of the logbook entry from Vostok showing the recorded value as -89.2°C. StephenHudson 22:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sea ice increase

Sea Ice Increase? I heard (CNN) that sea ice surrounding Antarctica set a new record for extent this Fall (2007, heard Oct 20). Some articles I found on web seem to confirm this growth, but none seemed definitive. Can anyone comment in the article? The key point is of course that since we argue that Arctic sea ice shrinkage is important, mustn't growth in the Antarctic also be an indicator of something? Cherrywood 20:51, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ is good. Yes you're right, there is a new max. Is it an indicator of something? Good question... William M. Connolley 21:01, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Climate Change - NASA Image

Original image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Antarctic_temps.AVH1982-2004.jpg After considerable dicussion here [1] and here [2] consensus was reached that this NASA image, while a beautiful piece of art, has some kind of accuracy problem. It may mislabeled, or perhaps has a misplaced decimal point; we were unable to determine the nature of the problem. We agreed not to use at Antarctica cooling controversy it because it was misleading. I have replaced it here with a new image (cropped version) from NASA's website. I have requested comments from Dr. William M. Connolley, as he is an expert in Antarctic Climate. "Specifically, Dr. C, I felt that the circle represent the Scott-Amundsen Station was too large, and gave the data from that station too much weight. However, I didn't feel that I could change that without the possibility of compromising the scientific accuracy of the image. Please let me know your opinion." An alternative image appears here [3], but the previous discussion leads me to believe that the 250 km smoothing is preferred. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sagredo (talk • contribs) 04:41, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree there is something wrong with the NASA image. My guess would be it is °C/decade. I've also never liked the projection, but that's another issue. Given the lack of ground-based observations, and the short period of record from satellites, I prefer the format of the new image—trends from station data, shown locally. The circle from the Pole data is too large (there is no way data from there are representative of the southern part of the Ross Ice Shelf). I don't think cutting the Pole circle to half of its current radius would affect the image's integrity, especially if the image page notes what was done. Another option would be a new figure (which would also allow it to focus on only the Antarctic region). William M. Connolley do you have an image like Fig 1a in your Turner et al. (2006) Science paper that shows surface, rather than 500-mb, trends? Or, if anyone can direct me to a data repository with surface air temperature data from most Antarctic stations, I could create a new image; I have access only to data from South Pole and Vostok. StephenHudson 17:59, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
Welcome Stephen, it's great to have another expert on antarctic climate. Dr. C provided this link http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/gjma/ to the BAS's data, although I'm not sure it is specific data for which you are looking. Not sure it's complete, either; I didn't see McMurdo. SagredoDiscussione? 19:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
It occurs to me that the data might not actually be needed. If a new map is made with a dot for each station, and those dots were colored using photoshop (or similar software) to move the color from the current image, and the scale is moved from the current image, it still should be accurate. The biggest problem is likely to be identifying which station is which on the current image. All we really need is a nice outline map showing the location of the stations. SagredoDiscussione? 22:08, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
The final modification (smaller circle for the South Pole) I will make to the image. It's still far from perfect, and if SH obtains the data and makes another, I'm sure I'll see it is an improvement. WMC would likely know of the existence of a suitable data repository; you might leave a note on his talk page. SagredoDiscussione? 01:22, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
This [4] shows you most of the stations. Or a table [5]. McMurdo is probably missing because it isn't very good; Scott base is just nearby and is run by real Met people. The current map looks OK to me though its the wrong way round :-) William M. Connolley 09:46, 12 November 2007 (UTC)