
This isn’t the first time SciEnvy has gotten political, and I’m sure that it will not be the last. If you’ve tuned in to the news this week, you will also have born witness to a series of executive orders pouring from The Whitehouse like they’re going out of fashion. Amongst lies spouted from the 45th President of the United States Donald J. Trump about inauguration numbers, tweeting out a photo of Barrack Obama’s crowd with the wrong date inscribed, and acts of atrocity against women, comes - quite frankly - terrifying policy changes to a well established climate policy.

The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the most rapidly warming regions on the planet, having warmed by around 3°C at Faraday/Vernadsky station in half a century. Although this warming has slowed, and is even largely absent in the most recent years, this still has dramatic consequences for the region. Part of the reason that the peninsula has warmed so much in the last 50 years is because of changing atmospheric circulation, and the changing index of the dominant climatological mode in the Southern Hemisphere, known as the Southern Annular Mode, or SAM.