Status: 03/20/2022 11:29 am
Typically, temperatures in Antarctica fall with the end of summer in the southern hemisphere. But now they are more than 30 degrees Celsius higher than usual for this time of year. Researchers speak of a historical event.
Unusually high temperatures have been measured in eastern Antarctica in recent days. According to experts, these fell more than 30 degrees Celsius higher than usual for the time of year.
The Dome Concordia research station at an altitude of 3,000 meters registered a “heat” record of minus 11.5 degrees Celsius on Friday, meteorologist Etienne Kapikian from Météo-France said on Twitter.
“Never seen anything like it”
Temperatures are also rising at the cold pole of the earth. According to the Washington Post, minus 17.7 degrees Celsius were measured at the Vostok station at an altitude of over 3400 meters in eastern Antarctica. This exceeded the previous monthly record by 15 degrees. For March, minus 53 degrees Celsius is usual, the newspaper wrote.
The researcher Ted Scambos from the University of Colorado commented on the measured value to the AP news agency that he had never observed anything comparable before.
The Dumont d’Urville station on the east coast also registered a record temperature of 4.9 degrees Celsius for the month of March. March 18th was the coldest with 0.2 degrees plus.
Scientists concerned
Typically, temperatures in Antarctica fall with the end of summer in the southern hemisphere. The unusually mild weather in the east of the icy continent is a “historic event,” said Gaetan Heymes of Météo-France.
“This is the moment when temperatures should drop rapidly after December’s summer solstice,” Grenoble geoscientist Jonathan Wille said on Twitter. “This heatwave in Antarctica is changing what we thought was possible for Antarctic weather,” he added.
Extension of ice to depression
It is still unclear whether the events can be attributed to climate change. However, the accumulation and intensification of heat waves is a clear sign of global warming. The poles are heating up faster than the rest of the planet, which has an average temperature 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
It was only at the beginning of March that the climate change service of the EU program Copernicus announced that the extent of the Antarctic sea ice measured daily in February had reached its lowest point since records began in 1979. For the month as a whole, the extent of the ice was 27 percent below the average for the years 1991 to 2020 – this is the second lowest value in the past four decades.