Spurious trends in high latitude Southern Hemisphere precipitation observations

Ocean heat content, cryosphere interactions, Antarctic bottom water development and the cloud-albedo feedbacks need to be understood to form a complete picture of the climate system. However, the high latitude SH is one of the most under-observed regions due to its remoteness.

The advent of satellites and reanalyses have improved our monitoring of this region. Some previous studies observed an increase in precipitation over the SH high latitudes, however we argue that some of the trends in commonly used data sets may be artifacts. We use regression analysis of trends in precipitation and the Southern Annular Mode to contrast these relationships in satellite and reanalysis products, and to evaluate precipitation over the SH.