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Intense winds help Antarctica keep its cool despite climate change, according to a new study. Scientists overwhelmingly agree global warming exists and humans are largely responsible, but Antarctica seems to have bucked the trend, with portions of it cooling, while the rest of the planet heats up. The key to Antarctic weather is the wind, says Australian National University climate scientist Nerilie Abram, lead author of a new study that explains this in the context of a warmer world. They control how far north the rain bands go out of the Southern ocean, Abram said. And they are also really important for temperature and in particular for the temperature of Antarctica and also the Antarctic peninsula, which is the bit of Antarctica that juts out right into the path of those westerly winds. That westerly wind belt circulates the continent. The study in Nature Climate Change finds that those winds are now stronger and their path tighter than at any time in the past 1,000 years. That change has been especially prominent since the 1940s. Abram and her team reconstructed Antarcticas climate history from ice cores. They conclude the wind has kept a large part of the continent cold, unlike anywhere else on the planet. But we can explain that because as those westerly winds are getting stronger, they are actually tying [trapping] the cold air over Antarctica, and it stops warm air masses from being able to get over the continent and help to warm Antarctica, Abram said. So this example of something that seems like a climate change paradox, we can actually explain by these greenhouse gases that are strengthening the westerly winds and isolating parts of Antarctica. | 
