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Carbon emissions are chilling the atmosphere 90 km above Antarctica

While greenhouse gases are warming Earth’s surface, they’re also causing rapid cooling far above us, at the edge of space. In fact, the upper atmosphere about 90 km above Antarctica is cooling at a rate ten times faster than the average warming at the planet’s surface.

Over 24 years, the upper atmosphere temperature has cooled by about 3°C, or 1.2°C per decade. That is about ten times greater than the average warming in the lower atmosphere – about 1.3°C over the past century.