Climate change is happening despite skeptics believing the expansion of the Antarctic sea ice shows the contrary. A new study has revealed the expanding is down to natural climate fluctuations and shouldn’t negate the real danger that climate change is having on this planet.

The study was conducted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) on the Antarctic area after reports showed the expansion of the sea ice had reached a record of 7.78 million square miles back in late 2014 showing the opposite of shrinkage rapidly occurring in the Arctic according to a report in The Washington Post.

Climate scientist at the NCAR and lead author of the study, Gerald Meehl explained that when it comes to climate change, it’s not just pollution causing changes but a combination of man-made means and the Earth’s natural reaction.

“The climate we experience during any given decade is some combination of naturally occurring variability and the planet’s response to increasing greenhouse gases. It’s never all one or the other, but the combination, that is important to understand.”

This comes as a blow to climate change skeptics who argue the expansion of sea ice doesn’t match up to the idea that the planet is slowly warming up. Scientists still don’t fully understand why this phenomenon is happening but one theory is the natural climatic changes in the more tropical Pacific Ocean that go on to have a global consequences. The cycle named Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation or IPO, had been shifting into a negative phase over the last century meaning ocean surface temperatures have cooled down.

“When you get changes in [sea surface temperatures] in some areas of the tropics, you affect precipitation, that affects the amount of energy released in the atmosphere,” said Meehl. “That starts affecting, through this kind of chain reaction process, circulation at great distances away.”

What the study shows is that climate change is still a major threat despite the cooling temperatures with the polar opposite of the Arctic showing damaging signs of ice sheets melting and species rapidly declining.

The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.