Preface to the Special Issue on Antarctic Meteorology and Climate: Past, Present and Future

The Antarctic, including the continent of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, is a critically important part of the Earth system. Research in Antarctic meteorology and climate has always been a challenging endeavor. Studying and predicting weather patterns in the Antarctic are important for understanding their role in local-to-global processes and facilitating field studies and logistical operations in the Antarctic (e.g., Walsh et al., 2018). Studies of climate change in the Antarctic are comparatively neglected compared to those of the Arctic. However, significant climate changes have occurred in the Antarctic in the past several decades, i.e., a strong warming over the Antarctic Peninsula even with a recent minor cooling, a deepening of the Amundsen Sea low, a rapid warming of the upper ocean north of the circumpolar current, an increase of Antarctic sea ice since the late 1970s followed by a recent rapid decrease, and an accelerated ice loss from the Antarctic ice shelf/sheet since the late 1970s (e.g., Turner et al., 2005; Raphael et al., 2016; Sallée, 2018; Parkinson, 2019; Rignot et al., 2019). Investigating recent climate change in the Antarctic and the underlying mechanisms are important for predicting future climate change and providing information to policymakers.

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