Antarctica is actually warming

One of the major issues claimed by skeptics against climate change is that Antarctica is actually cooling. How is this possible when the whole earth should be, according to scientists, warming?

Well an answer has actually been found that rebukes the whole idea. Check this out at The Guardian. A recent investigation into the issue has discovered that while some parts of the frozen continent have been getting slightly colder over the last few decades, the average temperature across the continent has been rising for at least the last 50 years.

How come?

The picture below explains it all:

The Western part of Antarctica (shown in red) has been warming at a rate of 0.17 degrees C every decade for the past 50 years. This outweighs the observed cooling in the Eastern part of Antarctica for a an average heating over the region of 0.12 degrees C per decade. This rate matches the heating rate of the southern hemisphere as a whole.

This was not understood before since there was not much data for the Western Antarctica and / or any date it was not yet analysed. Mainly, satellite data was used for this study. Furthermore, it should be noted that the cooling is caused by the ozone hole, a feature that is healing itself and will eventually close by mid-century. Hence, more accelerated warming is expected.