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A British-led group of climate researchers claim that their research has demonstrated for the first time that human activity is responsible for significant warming in both polar regions.
Rising Arctic temperatures and the accelerating retreat of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean had been widely reported but the changes not formally attributed to human influence because of sparse observations and natural variability.
Temperature trends had been less clear over the Antarctic. Now a paper published in Nature GeoScience has suggested that observed changes in both regions were not consistent with natural climate variability.
The scientists claim human activities had caused significant global warming in both regions, along with likely impacts on polar biology, indigenous communities, ice-sheet mass balance and global sea level.
