Climate Science Update: The Latest Global, Arctic, and Antarctic Graphs & Maps: Thanks you Zack Labe

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:02]Hello everybody.

[00:00:04]My name is Beckwith, Paul Beckwith, and I'm wearing my uh connecting the dots, abrupt climate system mayhem, showing the AOK where the red is the surface waters, the Gulf Stream here, and the blue is the water that um is moving in the deep ocean. So basically what I want to talk about in this video is some of the work that Zach Lee is presenting.

[00:00:35]He's a climate scientist now with climate central. Um he's passionate about improving science communication through data datadriven stories and he's got a great um number of postings on blue sky. Hey, you know, many scientists have gravitated to blue sky and posting less or have completely left some other social media platform. So, I thought that I haven't talked about what he's been up to lately. So, let's have a look at some of his uh climate. So, he's got great climate data visualizations um in the Arctic, Antarctic, and then global climate change stuff. So let's have a look at some of his stuff. So this is the polar um polar climate change figures um near realtime visualizations on all these different aspects.

[00:01:33]So the Arctic uh this is Arctic sea ice extent over the years. Um and there's a lot of videos and animation. So September sea ice decreasing 12.1% per decade. Lots of variability. You can see uh so this is 1979. So this is the beginning of um you know accurate data from satellites etc started coming in.

[00:01:59]So you can see the downward trends and the fluctuation.

[00:02:03]This is I've talked a lot about uh polar temperature amplification.

[00:02:10]So basically this is from 1940 to now and it charts the it's a ratio of the temperature. This is in the Arctic from 65 north to 90 north the the dark yellow line and then the dash yellow line. If you go up even higher to the high Arctic 80 to 90 degree north um the warming is much much greater than it is um than the global average or in equatorial regions.

[00:02:40]Right? The high Arctic is warming, you know, anywhere from four to seven times faster than the average temperature. And we're also getting a polar amplification in Antarctica. So, this is 65 south to 90 south uh here. And in the high Arctic from 80 south to 90 south, right around Antarctica is the dashed line. So, we're getting, you know, the amplification as you go closer to the pole is higher. So the you know of course it's colder at the poles but the temperature change at the poles um the temperature increase is is much greater than it is at lower latitude. So this is polar temperature amplification and this is why um this has profound effects on jet streams of course because the jet streams depend on the temperature difference between the pole and the equator and the stronger that temperature difference is um the stronger the jet streams are. But with the polar warming much faster than the equatorial warming it's lowering that temperature gradient or difference. So the jet streams are slowing down, getting wier, stuck in place. And this is uh we're seeing a the result of this is a huge increase in frequency, severity, and duration of extreme weather events, including having extreme weather events happen in places they didn't happen before. So this is uh there's air temperature trends um degrees Celsius per per decade. Uh and uh this is uh over the Arctic region.

[00:04:16]Okay, so there's some regions that are getting much greater warming than other regions within the Arctic. And then this is precipitation trends uh millimeters per day per decade. The green and and these ones are the increase. So there's more precipitation occurring in the warmer regions of the Arctic specifically. Um and there's less precipitation here at slightly lower latitudes. Um you can see this is a graph of the you know three different data sources showing changes in arctic precipitation. You can see the general trend line from 1980 to present. Uh the baseline the zeroing is the average 1981 to 2010 and you can see a a large you can see an increase in precipitation.

[00:05:05]This is in millimeter per day precipitation rate anomalies.

[00:05:10]Um so the Arctic is warming and getting wetter in places. Um this is uh 86 to 95 uh and uh 96 to 20. So these are 10-year periods basically um to present the latest 10-year period 2016 to 2025. And you can see the huge warming. You know, it seemed to take off after about like there was some warming in 86 to 95 started getting more amplified 96 to 2005. But b something broke in the system. I mean it looks like it greatly accelerated to this decade 2006 to 2015 and also the most recent decade you know widespread warming of the Arctic. Of course the sea ice is correspondingly thinning. Um this is the thickness um in meters of each year um where it's thicker in these regions and you can see it's thinning throughout throughout the Arctic. Uh you know again this is a decadal comparison. You can compare it to the temperatures and you can see where where it's been. Uh so this is fast ice. It's ice that's stuck near the coast. You know all the ice is is thinning as we head to a blue ocean event. The only thing that would stop a blue ocean event in the Arctic is a shut off of the AMO, which I've discussed quite a bit. Um, this is Arctic temperature amplification.

[00:06:34]So, air temperature uh is greatly increasing in the Arctic. Um, and then sea ice extent is correspondingly dropping quickly. We thought it would vanish over here maybe, but it's there's been some sort of, you know, it has it's sticking around still. And then sea surface temperature in the open ocean is greatly increasing also. Um and uh this is sort of the annual view here. Um sea surface temperature trends in degrees Celsius per decade from 1982 to 2025.

[00:07:11]You can see the trends. So the sea surface temperature is warming all around the fringes of the sea ice um and in the North Atlantic large num amounts of of of warming. You can see the trends per decade. This is the Arctic sea ice trends um in each month.

[00:07:31]So it's a concentration uh percentage per decade of sea ice. And you can see um the drops here. You know the red is dropping off of a cliff. The darker the red, the more the drop. And you can see how it's changing. Um, so this is percentage per decade. Um, from uh 1979 to 2025.

[00:07:55]Um, and uh it so it shows you the drops each month. So um each month of the year. So winter months uh starting to spring into summer and the fall. So you can see, you know, the most red that you see, look at August, July pretty bad.

[00:08:15]August even worse. September, you know, and in this in the fall, September, October are the worst months in terms of the loss of ice. So the ice isn't reforming as quickly as it used to in these months. And then um through the winter months also reduced. Arctic climate, this is again, so this is another view. This is air temperature in the Arctic and this is the sea ice extent again. Um okay so there's and then the these sort of plots are this is January to December you know se 1979 to present and you can see you know look at the tremendous warmth um in uh February of the last couple years um and also in October and November and quite a bit in December too. I mean, October seems to be consistently the warmest month up in the Arctic. These are the averages, the average anomaly, you know, these very dark uh reds are up to four degrees warmer than normal. you know, certainly three to four degrees in in, you know, in October, November, December in the Arctic and also through through to um January, February, March and then, you know, in the summer um it's already warm up there and the sea ice is gone. But so we're not seeing huge but we're seeing the huge anomalies um in temperature um in the um in in in in the winter months. the the the basically the fall in into the winter into the spring then the anomalies are less in the summer months. Um this is showing again a different way of depicting it anomalies in degrees Celsius and uh those so those are written within the anomalies and the rank by month. So right here um well I guess this is the ranking these numbers here by month.

[00:10:19]Okay. So, and the anomalies are in the color again four to five degrees Celsius anomaly in in those regions. Changes in Arctic sea ice extent. This is the extent of of of sea ice um and the volume. If you multiply the the uh area of sea ice by the thickness um you can see how the changes are occurring um you know pretty consistent trends downwards.

[00:10:48]Um and and then this is a comparison.

[00:10:51]This is sea ice by year in the Arctic.

[00:10:53]Now and in Antarctica, we had an increase of about 1 and a.5% per decade in sea ice around Antarctica, but it dropped off a cliff around 2015 or so.

[00:11:04]And uh it hasn't recovered from that.

[00:11:08]And there's a new paper that's out and it argues that this drop of massive change in regime shift in Antarctica is a lot of the heat that's in the deeper water below has come up and it's melted the ice from underneath and preventing prevented sea ice formation. So causing you know a drop off like a breaking point if you like a tipping point a threshold cross you know where Arctic sea ice is vanishing. So now the question is is will the sea ice vanish?

[00:11:38]Will we get a blue ocean event where it's less than a million square kilometers one summer? Um will we get it um in the Arctic first or the Antarctic?

[00:11:48]And I think the the only person the only um entity that knows that answer is the AOK um the the ocean currents what what those do. This is sea ice average by year showing again. So the this is these two curves uh over you know off you know on the same plot um you can see the Arctic drop off here um and the Antarctic increase until 2015 or so and then well this is 2012 I guess 2012 2013 it peaked and by you know 2015 it was well off it was dropping plummeting I guess you could argue 2014 2015 2016 you know really dropping off cliff, a little bit of recovery, but it's still now continuing downwards. And then change in land ice. So, this is ice on land in Antarctica and Greenland. And uh you know these depictions um from Zach are fantastic for explaining what is happening uh to you know in our polar region. So you can see the drop off.

[00:12:53]This is gigatons of melt. This is on on from the ice that's that's sitting on bedrock in Antarctica and also in Greenland. And of course this is this melt water then goes into the ocean and raises sea level. So you can compare what's happening in the two poles. And this is to be totally expected do because of the huge warming of the polar regions which I talked about earlier the Arctic temperature amplification and Antarctic temperature amplification.

[00:13:25]This is uh this is annual Arctic sea ice since 1850. So it uses reconstructions and so on. And you can see that we're in very unusual times here. Um this is uh one source of data and this is another source of data. This is blue. So you can see the drop off um reconstructing Arctic sea ice by year. So this is that this was from eight um well from 1850 onwards and this is showing you um the same sort of thing from some different data sets. There's something called the sea ice index, Arctic sea ice thickness by year. And there's a plot of I like these sort of plots because you can see a view of the Arctic, you know, 7 1979, nice and thick ice. That's the yellows.

[00:14:16]Um, going to thinner, you know, the reds and blues, very, very thick solid ice, you know, in these decades. And then boom, you know, here's where we are, 2025, 2024. So, you know, the only thick ice left is near just north of the Canadian archipilago and north of Greenland. Okay. So, are we going to see this vanish? This is monthly sea ice sickness near the North Pole. So, in the Arctic since 1979, the 80s, the 90s, 2000s. So, it's been dropping and dropping. And here we are in 2025.

[00:14:54]Last year, you know, very like it's below all the other curves. So, it's heading to to disappear. Um, this is air temperature ranking by month. Um, in the Arctic region, I've shown you some similar things. Um, Antarctic sea ice thickness by year. So, you can see, um, and the thicker ice is the whiter stuff.

[00:15:18]Um, this is sea ice thickness average over each year from 79 to 2025. So you can see the trends and I would expect you know after 2015, 2016, 2017 um and so on. Uh you can see you know thinner ice um you can see you can't see the changes as clearly but you you know on from this diagram but the changes are there like in the fringes and so on. Um and I they're all they're all they're they're depicted better in the graph I guess. um Antarctic temperatures by decade. Uh you know some warming of Antarctica here. Uh the last decade of course the most intense warming you know at so these spots that are warm here are getting warmer and warmer here but now the warmth is spread around the whole continent of Antarctica and over the ocean surrounding Antarctica.

[00:16:14]Reconstituted sea ice. Um uh this is um go this is this is going back uh well 1500 years. So this is 2000 and then 1750 and and so on all the way back. So you can see the fluctuation. So we're in very anomalous in times temperature anomaly for each year in the Arctic. You know, look at the last decade, two couple decades. Red's red's all over.

[00:16:45]Whereas before there was variability, this is recent Arctic amplification.

[00:16:52]Um, so this is amplification. These are temperature anomalies.

[00:16:57]Um, again, just another way of depicting it. So, so huge increases in and and then this is the ice. Um this is September Arctic sea ice concentration over the last hundred years. So you can see kind of you know where where the ice is and uh you know it it comes up to 2017 and if you click on here you know you can bring it full screen and so on.

[00:17:25]So so it's there polar amplification.

[00:17:30]So this is the ratio of the arctic warming um 67 to 90 degree north to the base to the global average and Antarctic 67 to 90 south. Um and you can see that the ar the amplification this is annual surface temperature anomalies in degrees Celsius. So the arctic um the fluctuation but very very rapidly rising trend and it's much steeper. So the polar amplification is much greater in Antarctica than it is over Antarctica.

[00:18:04]Not to be not to be surprised because Antarctica, you know, a lot of the very cold temperatures are because of the very high elevation of the land and then and then the kilometer thick ice on top of the continent, right? So you would expect that to kind of moderate the temperatures um which is what we see the Arctic amplifications much greater than Antarctica.

[00:18:27]Um this is the this shows the Arctic temperature rise versus the global rise.

[00:18:32]So you know the global the ratio is huge and it's higher as you go higher north.

[00:18:39]Um sea ice in late August. Um all right there's lots of very cool um images and this one goes up to 2024.

[00:18:49]Um so so and you can freeze the video for each for any given year. And then this is this is the age of the ice. So this is very young ice. 0 to 1 years, 1 to two years, 2 to three. Like so the older ice is is most of the salts being rejected from the older ice. The older ice is mostly just fresh water, fresh water ice. Um the brine pockets that go or so when the ice freezes from the seawater, there's salt, you know, at 3 and a half% or 35 practical salinity units. And then when it freezes, it starts to the brine pockets start to they're denser. They work their way out through the ice. So as you get aging of the ice, you get less and less salt con content in the ice. And then the ice is uh basically it doesn't have so many pockets. And this is regional uh Arctic sea ice. Um how how it's dropped off in different regions of the Arctic. So each different region the Arctic is is separated in that plot. um regional sea ice. Um so this is different months.

[00:19:55]This is uh annual. This is uh June through September, summer months and so on. Okay. So there's lots of uh what's this? This is Arctic sea ice extent. Um uh in in you know and it's got the units here. Um so the brighter areas are larger amounts larger extents and it goes through each month and each year to show you the sea ice extent. You can see what's happening here you know in this this is the um the months when when the ice is uh decreases the most. Uh Arctic sea ice extent anomalies again in these months the the anomalies are getting much larger uh through time. You can see the trends um normalized sea ice extent um okay relative to some sort of baseline you know just different ways of looking at the data you know record highs of Arctic sea ice extent um back in the 80s uh early 80s to you know 8 to well this is 8 82 83 85 86 six and then record lows start you know 2012 here uh 20 and so on. So so each of these months had record lows um so for example in 2025 February March uh June um and December of last year those four months had had record lows in ice extent. Um okay uh so there so you get the idea. I mean, if you want information on Arctic sea ice, on Arctic temperatures, sea ice volumes, distributions, you know, anything at all, uh, then this is the source of data to get to get that. Okay. So, let's, uh, close that and we'll have a look. Uh, so that's all here. You know, I clicked on here.

[00:21:57]There's glo. Well, that's Arctic sea ice extent. There's or fuller changes.

[00:22:02]Um, he he separates it. Zach separates it into Arctic and Antarctic. And then these are the overall climate indicators.

[00:22:11]Average global temperature departure by month relative to 1850 to 1900 baseline.

[00:22:17]You can see you know what's going on here. Um the last few few years you know start this is about 20 um 15 or so here.

[00:22:28]You know, from 2015 onward, we have tremendous global warming through each month of the year. And uh daily global mean temperatures. This is what's happening um in this year as of April 25th, 2026. That's this curve here. Um and you can see um this is 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial, this line here, which we're rapidly approaching.

[00:22:57]Um, okay. Daily global mean sea surface temperatures. Uh, here's where we are here. And then the envelope of all the previous years and when we set records.

[00:23:08]So these 2023 set records for the latter half of the year. For example, global monthly global mean temperatures.

[00:23:17]We're tracing along the top of the curve. Um, 2024. You know, you can just click on any of these years to highlight it. This was 2024, you know, the record year when we, you know, we had an El Nino going on. So, if there's an El Nino, this curve is going to going to trace uh probably could set new records significantly. You know, we we actually set temperatures of 1.7° C, 1.68 or something. Um, if there's a power fell El Nino, then we'll be heading up to probably 1.7 something, 1.8 even, uh, is possible.

[00:23:56]global average surface temperature change from pre-industrial um this is a 60 month this is a five-year average running mean. Okay, so here's where we are with the five-year running mean. we did cross 1.5 for three years um for 36 months basically um bracketing the peak of the last uh powerful El Nino a few years ago and so phase um 1.5 right so we passed it here um these are um these are uh some of the uh uh mean surface temperature anomalies um during NSOS uh global temperature change um you know so we crossed that 1.5 for for months months many months CO2 levels 1970 levels 2000 we're here you know we're 4 421 or 431 parts per million excuse me we just reached so CO2 equivalence and radiative forcings uh Hansen talks about earth energy imbalance quite quite a bit. These are the This is northern hemisphere rise, southern hemisphere rise by region. Um mid latitudes um in the tropics, right? Tropics, the warming in the tropics is not as high as it is as you go to higher latitudes, polar regions. I've talked about that already. Um there there's El Nino indices and so on. um global average surface temperature change from pre-industrial land only you know up if you you know we we're already living in a two Celsius world right we live on the land but if you take the overall you know overall global average of course if the oceans moderate and pull that number down but you know we talk about 1.5 or two above pre-industrial well we're already there as land lovers okay Um and uh yeah so you get the idea. This this is global average surface temperature change from 1850 to 1900.

[00:26:15]Um that's so so so the average of 1850 to 1900 and this is plotted for the year southern hemisphere only global no polar land northern hemisphere only. So northern hemisphere is warming significantly faster than the southern hemisphere. Reason being that there's a lot more land in the northern hemisphere, a lot more ocean in the southern hemisphere. So, so globes warming says now at 429 ppm. Well, I saw this is updated February 2026. We we we surpassed 431.

[00:26:50]Um, and nitrous oxide over 339. Methane stalled out here. Uh, but it's rising very rapidly again. increase in CO carbon dioxide by a year. Look at this.

[00:27:04]We hit over uh the the rise here. You know, what's that? 3.3 parts per million, something like that. Couple years in a row, we had really really high CO2 emissions. There was less absorption of um by plants on land and by the ocean.

[00:27:24]Um since 1600, we're here. So you can take your birth year and look up what the average CO2 was. And then you know when people say when what you know when were you born what year were you born you can say I was born at uh you know 330 you know I I was born at 370 ppm or whatever.

[00:27:47]Good conversation starter. Um so here we are. we are uh 12 month running means you know we were over 1.5 um it depends on the baseline here so this is a recent baseline if you take the baseline 1850 to 1900 then we were over one we were about 1 1.5 1.6 6 1.7 for three three years in a row. Global ocean heat content. The oceans are working overtime absorbing more and more heat. Um this is sea level um 100 millimeter rise since 1993. You can see the curve is going upwards uh with global sea sea level. You know as the oceans are heating they expand and and so on. You know the these are changes in annual temperature. So you get the idea.

[00:28:37]I mean, I'm just pointing these are temperature trends by latitude um in different months. So, you can see, you know, in the Arctic, huge Arctic temperature amplification, but it's in this is October to December. Um, and it's also big January to February, but it's biggest by far in October to December. And then there's very little polar temperature amplification in April to June in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Um and uh in the ar the northern hemisphere summer months there's less um arctic amplification but it's the southern hemisphere winter and there's more um amplification of the the the warming trends um loss of glaciers, changes of land ice, air temperature trends. This is interesting because it shows you uh you know basically at the equator if you take the this uh you know this is the 300 well this this line here this line this is basically the troposphere underneath here and this is the stratosphere up above and the numbers I normally remember about 17 kilometers altitude at the equator to the troposphere uh top which is the tropopause this layer before you get to the stratosphere and it's down to about 7 kilometers altitude um at the two poles. So this is the southern this is uh south pole north pole and then you can see the warming huge warming near the surface um at very very high uh latitudes. Okay so this is the this is air pressure here.

[00:30:23]Okay, so these are trends in the air temperature trends degrees Celsius per decade. So this this uh illustration is fantastic. Tells you a lot about about the um you know the the troposphere the stratosphere where the dividing line is is a function of latitude and how each of these regions is warming. So as we get warming in the troposphere uh we actually get uh some sort of cooling up in the stratosphere but it's unequal cooling and this is because more heat is trapped by the greenhouse gases in this region. This is a region where all the weather happens where all the storms happen. when you see a large uh cumulone nimbus cloud punching upwards, you know, mid latitudes or whatever, you see that anvil shape. Well, that anvil is flattening out at the the tropopause which is dividing the the troposphere from the stratosphere.

[00:31:17]So, this is fully expected as our as our troposphere is warming, climate change, global warming, we actually get a cooling at higher up up in the stratosphere.

[00:31:29]um and that changes the chem chemistry effects etc. This is expected because more heat is trapped where we are and less heat is escaping out to space. So this is indicative of a a warming planet. And then you have uh these um this is the trends um this is really interesting. These are the trends of warming Celsius per decade in J December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November. So you can see this you know this is the overall trend per decade but this is the uh you know individual you know you can see some really interesting behavior here in particular like these are showing the bowed down curves but December January February what the heck's happening here sudden stratospheric warming going on here um again ocean land Arctic temperatures rising at different rates because of the heat capacity capacity of of water is huge. It takes a lot more energy. Temperature anomalies, right?

[00:32:34]There's just all kinds of stuff here. I mean, there's all really good data. I highly recommend that you follow Zach on um uh Zach Lee on Blue Sky and have a look at all of the data. It's you you learn an awful lot of science by going through this. So, thanks for uh doing this. He's a great climate communicator with his plots and stuff and I don't I try to if you're following him on blue sky you can see you know he does so this is a summary on his basic websites and then he but he updates the new stuff as as new data comes in. So that's what his specific posts are. So this is like a day ago you know it looks like he did maybe 10 posts you know a day ago and then other posts uh two two days ago. So whenever he updates things he posts, but you can get the overall. So there's this temperature um uh distribution between the North Pole and the South Pole, temperature anomalies by latitude and right. So all of these are located on his main uh sites. So his tweets are basically when he does updates to data.

[00:33:47]But if you go through these here, you can't go wrong. You'll learn a lot of science about climate and the atmosphere and the physics and so on. You know, weather patterns, etc., etc., what the Arctic's doing, what the Antarctic's doing, ratios as a function of latitude, all these all these fun things. So, anyway, I highly recommend you have a look at that. Please go to my website, paulbeckwith.net, and donate to PayPal to support my research and videos.

[00:34:12]Thanks again, and bye for now. I I have to uh rush off to my comedy class. So, thanks for watching. Bye for now.