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Analysis of trends and sudden changes in long-term environmental data from King George Island (Antarctica): relationships between global climatic oscillations and local system response

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Abstract

The Western Antarctic Peninsula is one of the most rapidly warming regions on earth. It is therefore important to analyze long-term trends and inter-annual patterns of change in major environmental parameters to understand the process underlying climate change in Western Antarctica. Since many polar long-term data series are fragmented and cannot be analysed with common time series analysis tools, we present statistical approaches that can deal with missing values. We applied U-statistics after Pettit and Buishand to detect abrupt changes, dynamic factor analysis to detect functional relationships, and additive modelling to detect patterns in time related to climatic cycles such as the Southern Annular Mode and El Niño Southern Oscillation in a long-term environmental data set from King George Island (WAP), covering 20 years. Our results not only reveal sudden changes for sea surface temperature and salinity, but also clear patterns in all investigated variables (sea surface temperature, salinity, suspended particulate matter and Chlorophyll a) that can directly be related to climatic cycles. Our results complement previous findings on climate related changes in the King George Island Region and provide insight into the environmental conditions and climatic drivers of system change in the study area. Hence, our statistical analyses may prove valuable for other polar environmental data sets and contribute to a better understanding of the regional variability of climate change and its impact on coastal systems.

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Acknowledgments

This study is part of the IMCOAST program, which is part of the PolarClimate program of the European Research Council within the ERA-Net Europolar. This particular subproject was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, ref. no. 03F0617A). We thank the Servicio Meteorológico Nacional of the Argentine Air Force for providing the air temperature data and IAA, DNA and AWI for supporting 20 years of cooperative field work at Carlini Station-Dallmann laboratory.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Am Handelshafen 12, 27570, Bremerhaven, Germany

    A. Valeria Bers & Doris Abele

  2. Institute of Sciences, National University of General Sarmiento, Juan M. Gutiérrez 1150, Los Polvorines, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Fernando Momo

  3. Instituto Antártico Argentino, Cerrito 1248 (C1010AAZ), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Irene R. Schloss

  4. CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Irene R. Schloss

  5. Institut des sciences de la mer de Rimouski, 310, Allée des Ursulines, G5L 3A1, Rimouski, Québec, Canada

    Irene R. Schloss

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  1. A. Valeria Bers
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  2. Fernando Momo
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  4. Doris Abele
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Correspondence to A. Valeria Bers.

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Bers, A.V., Momo, F., Schloss, I.R. et al. Analysis of trends and sudden changes in long-term environmental data from King George Island (Antarctica): relationships between global climatic oscillations and local system response. Climatic Change 116, 789–803 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0523-4

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