Erratum: Corrigendum: Central West Antarctica among the most rapidly warming regions on Earth

Abstract

In our Article presenting a reconstruction of the near-surface temperature record at Byrd Station, a calculation error led to an overestimation of the magnitude and statistical significance of the temperature trends in December-January shown in Fig. 3a,b and Supplementary Table S1. For 1958For -2010, the 'DJ' trend should have been 0.34 ± 0.24 °C per decade, instead of 0.45 ± 0.29 °C per decade, although the significance remained unchanged at the 99% level (P<0.01). For 1980-2010, the trend should have been 0.29 ± 0.53 °C per decade, instead of 0.76 ± 0.66 °C per decade, and thus was not statistically significant. As a result, the last sentence of the section entitled "Temperature trends at Byrd Station", referring to the significance of the trends during 1980-2010, should not include "except for December-January". This calculation error had no bearing on the other trends discussed in the paper.Furthermore, the reconstruction was done, in part, by merging temperature observations from the staffed Byrd Station established in 1957 and occupied year-round until the early 1970s, with temperatures recorded by the automatic weather station in operation since 1980. These observations were based on monthly mean temperatures compiled by the Antarctic READER Project 1 . Whenever possible, READER uses six-hourly data to compute the monthly means in an effort to produce consistent meteorological time series for Antarctica. Because six-hourly data were not found for Byrd for the years 1957 to 1975, the monthly means reported by READER for this period were taken from a previous compilation of Antarctic temperatures 2 based on monthly reports published in the Monthly Climatic Data for the World or the World Weather Records. One concern about these reports was the lack of information regarding the methodology used to derive the monthly means.In early 2013, we discovered previously unused sub-daily meteorological observations from Byrd Station for the period 1957-75 on the website of the National Climatic Data Center. This data set had been available for a few years but was overlooked during our reconstruction efforts. Using this data, we have recalculated the monthly mean temperatures from 1957 to 1975 in a manner consistent with the more recent portion of the Byrd record. For the period running from October to March, the recalculation yields higher temperatures (by 0.3 °C on average) than those previously published by READER, with virtually no effect (<0.1 °C) during the rest of the year. These discrepancies are likely to stem from the use of daily minima and maxima for the monthly reports published in the 1950s to 1970s, in conjunction with the effects of the diurnal cycle of air temperature during the sunlit part of the year. Both our temperature reconstruction (http://polarmet.osu.edu/Byrd_recon/) and the READER database have since been updated to incorporate these changes.This update reduces the magnitude of the long-term warming trend at Byrd (Fig. 3a). The 1958-2010 annual trend is lowered by around 10% (from 0.47 ± 0....

Statistical significance of seasonal warming/cooling trends

“…Fig. 1 shows, for illustration, the four seasonal temperature trends at Byrd station between 1957 and 2013 (32), in austral autumn, winter, spring, and summer. The data were obtained from the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University (33).…”

An Impact Assessment of GPS Radio Occultation Data on Prediction of a Rapidly Developing Cyclone over the Southern Ocean*

“…1 frequently forms in conjunction with a large temperature gradient due to strong and cold katabatic outflow from the high topography in East Antarctica and the relatively warm sea level temperature (Bromwich et al 2011). 1 frequently forms in conjunction with a large temperature gradient due to strong and cold katabatic outflow from the high topography in East Antarctica and the relatively warm sea level temperature (Bromwich et al 2011).…”

“…10a): one at the coast of East Antarctica near 1558E, and the other over the ocean near 1708E. In this region, the katabatic flow that carries cold, dry continental air to the coast (Parish and Bromwich 2007) is known to be an important factor in cyclone developments (Bromwich et al 2011). 10b).…”

“…Recent observation-based studies reveal strong warming and rapid ice-mass loss from West Antarctica (Marshall et al 2002;Vinnikov and Grody 2003;Turner et al 2005;Shepherd et al 2012;McMillan et al 2014), which ultimately results in a sea level rise (Oppenheimer 1998;Pritchard et al 2012;Bromwich et al 2013Bromwich et al , 2014. Synopticscale cyclones have the potential to deliver large amounts of precipitation, significant enough to counterbalance the loss of ice (Carleton and Fitch 1993;Nicolas and Bromwich 2011a).…”

“…Global reanalyses also exhibit elevated uncertainties in the high southern latitudes (Lim and Simmonds 2007;Nicolas and Bromwich 2011b). Consequently, the structure and development mechanism of synoptic-scale cyclones over the area are poorly understood when compared to other parts of the globe (Bromwich and Parish 2002;Lazzara et al 2012). Consequently, the structure and development mechanism of synoptic-scale cyclones over the area are poorly understood when compared to other parts of the globe (Bromwich and Parish 2002;Lazzara et al 2012).…”