From NoTricksZone

By Kenneth Richard

The phenomenon of increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases (water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane) is assumed to lead to sharply rising temperatures in polar regions, or “polar amplification.” As it turns out, it doesn’t.

Per a new radiative forcing model (Notholt et al., 2024), increasing CO2 from pre-industrial to present levels (278 to 400 ppm) results in a slight cooling effect for all of Antarctica (-0.01°C), reinforcing the “negative greenhouse effect” conclusion of previous studies.

The increased CO2 concentration does result in a warming for the Arctic in their model, but only 0.42°C for the 122 ppm increase. This implies CO2 cannot be responsible for the bulk of modern Arctic warming.

It was also determined that for Antarctica, “doubling CH4 leads to a cooling of almost the whole troposphere.”

The negative greenhouse effect of water vapor – Earth’s main greenhouse gas – dominates over CO2 with regard to climate impacts in polar regions.

The authors suggest their results provide an explanation for the “lack of warming seen in Antarctica throughout the last decades.”

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