“The difference between a single calculation and a solid paper in the technical literature is vast. A good paper examines a question from multiple angles and find ways to assess the robustness of its conclusions to all sorts of possible sources of error — in input data, in assumptions, and even occasionally in programming. If a conclusion is robust over as much of this as can be tested (and the good peer reviewers generally insist that this be shown), then the paper is likely to last the test of time. Although science proceeds by making use of the work that others have done before, it is not based on the assumption that everything that went before is correct. It is precisely because that there is always the possibility of errors that so much is based on ‘balance of evidence’ arguments’ that are mutually reinforcing.
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So it is with the Steig et al paper published last week.”

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/antarctic-warming-is-robust/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/21/sea-ice-news-32-southern-comfort/

curious: “My reading of it is that the peninsula shows a consistent warming trend. To my simple mind this suggests a net positive input of heat.”

bender: “Natural variability in the circumpolar ocean current – which affects the peninsula strongly, but actually serves to isolate the continental pole from the peninsula, both weather-wise and climate-wise.”

bender: “Remember the context here is warming of the tip of the Antarctic peninsula. Is this symptomatic of a global meltdown? Or is the Antarctic ocean doing something very interesting that we haven’t observed before in detail?”

These are discussions of physical aspects of the Antarctic system. The link between sub-glacial heat flux and surface temperatures may be remoter than that between atmospheric currents and surfact temps., but I don’t see how volcanoes are not an issue (to the point of curtailing any discussion of it). Concerns over glacial melting and sea level rise are what made S09 prominent in the first place.

To provide a possible partial answer to bender’s question above :
Corr and Vaughan (2008): “Unlike the East Antarctic ice sheet, which lies on generally aseismic continental crust that shows little volcanic activity, the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) lies over a crustal rift that has volcanism on its flanks and associated elevated geothermal heat flux.”

snip – no volcanoes please. Not an issue.