Recent Warming of Antarctica "Unusual But Not Unprecedented"

First time accepted submitter tomhath writes with a link to the abstract (full article paywalled) in Nature of an "Ice core study that concludes that climate change and associated melting of ice in Antarctica is more the norm than the exception, including rapid warming cycles as we appear to be in today. Study concludes: 'Although warming of the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula began around 600 years ago, the high rate of warming over the past century is unusual (but not unprecedented) in the context of natural climate variability over the past two millennia. The connection shown here between past temperature and ice-shelf stability suggests that warming for several centuries rendered ice shelves on the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula vulnerable to collapse.'"

Comments

Re:not unprecedented

[FhnuZoag]

Yeah.

1. This is a single study, of a single location.
2. The study *did* find that the temperature rise is in the upper 0.3% of the time period investigated.
3. There's significant error bars on the temperatures reconstructed, so I think the authors are overegging their data a little to claim that it's definitely not unprecedented.

The story summary claiming that current warming is more the norm than the except is plainly inaccurate.