Two new research papers, co-authored by PCC participants, show that temperatures in East Antarctica and other locations in the South Pole during the last ice age were several degrees warmer than previously thought. Research previously asserted that during the last ice age temperatures in Antarctica were an average of 9° C below modern values. However, that data did not match estimates from climate models and lacked calibration. The new research resolves these issues. Papers co-authored by TJ Fudge (UW ESS),  Eric Steig (UW ESS and current PCC Governing Board member), Emma Kahle a recent graduate of UW ESS, and Edwin Waddington (UW ESS), along with many other national and international partners used data from borehole thermometry, snowpack accumulation, and the South Pole Ice Core project to show that temperatures across Antarctica were 4-6° C cooler than today. Both studies reconcile observed data with climate model estimations, support the legitimacy of using models to reproduce climatic shifts, and help explain how the Antarctic responds to large-scale changes in climate.

Work by a team of scientists including Abigail Swann, who serves on the PCC executive board, and Marlies Kovenock, a former PhD student of Swann, looked into how tropical forests may be adapting to changing climate and how these adaptations have the potential to mitigate the effects of climate change. Tropical forests are currently responsible for absorbing a large amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but information on how plants and ecosystems may respond to the rising CO2 levels is not abundant, making this research critically important. 

Alison Gray (UW Oceanography) and her team recently published a paper in AGU about significant carbon dioxide outgassing in the Southern Ocean during the winter. The Southern Ocean was previously thought to be a carbon sink, based off of measurements that were sparse and tended to be from the summer. This paper used data from SOCCOM (Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling) floats that take measurements year-round. Steve Riser (UW Oceanography) leads the UW team that is a part of SOCCOM. They build and test the floats before they are deployed, and have a key role in SOCCOM's observational group.

A new study by PCC community members, Eric Steig and Brad Markle, is out in Nature. The team, led by researchers at University of Colorado, Boulder, demonstrated that climate variability in the Southern Hemisphere was forced by ice-sheet topography in the Northern Hemisphere. By using a fully-coupled climate model, the team determined the reason for the observed change in the ice core. They demonstrate that the retreat of the Laurentide–Cordilleran ice-sheets fundamentally altered the circulation of the ocean and atmosphere by reducing the strength of interactions between the tropical Pacific and high southern latitudes. Their results show that interannual and decadal variability in West Antarctica was reduced by nearly half during this retreat.

A new study led by doctoral student Elli Theobald, doctoral student Ian Breckheimer and biology professor Janneke Hille Ris Lambers help to uncover what subalpine communities may look like by the end of this century. Over the course of a few summers, the researchers studied the flowering patterns among the alpine species. They noted that the anomalous conditions of the 2015 suggested that new patterns of reassembled wildflower communities will occur, with unknown ecological consequences. However, there is not enough information to know who the "winners" and "losers" of reassembly will be, or even what "winning" or "losing" in this scenario would look like.