Paper of the Week: The link between snowfall increase in Antarctica and drought in southwest Western Australia

Tas van Ommen and Vin Morgan, of the Australian Antarctic Division, published a paper "Snowfall increase in coastal East Antarctica linked with southwest Western Australian drought" in Nature Geosciences. Turns out that this region of Australia has been facing a 40-year drought which was attributed to several factors, such as ‘natural variability, changes in land use, ocean temperatures and atmospheric circulation’. After evaluating the precipitation records of the two regions (East Antarctica and southwest Western Australia), the authors report an inverse correlation, surmising that the rain which should have fallen in Australia may have moved to Antarctica, resulting in heavy snowfall. What needs to be evaluated is whether this is purely due to anthropogenic climate change and whether the study can be substantiated by constructing similar correlations in other southern hemisphere nations which also has/had similar conditions of drought. van Ommen, T., & Morgan, V. (2010). Snowfall increase in coastal East Antarctica linked with southwest Western Australian drought, Nature Geoscience, 3 (4), 267-272