Globally, high-temperature records are absolutely dominating low-temperature records. Now, an Argentinian research station just observed Antarctica’s warmest temperature on record: a balmy 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3 Celsius).
Like all of today’s toppled high-temperature records, Earth’s relentlessly warming climate doesn’t create heat waves or warm weather events — but it boosts or enhances them. Researchers at Argentina’s Esperanza research station observed the record-setting temperature on Thursday. The base opened in 1952.
“Everything we have seen thus far indicates a likely legitimate record but we will of course begin a formal evaluation of the record once we have full data from SMN [El Servicio Meteorológico Nacional] and on the meteorological conditions surrounding the event,” Randal Cerveny, an expert in climate extremes at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), said in a statement.
The Antarctic Peninsula, on the northern tip of the ice-clad continent where the Esperanza station is located, “is among the fastest warming regions of the planet,” according to the WMO. It’s warmed nearly 5.4F (3C) since the 1950s.
So it makes sense the Antarctic Peninsula is where Antarctica recorded its hottest-ever temperature (the previous record of 63.5F, or 17.5C, was also observed at the Esperanza station, in 2015). It’s now mid-summer in Antarctica, and a weather event involving winds that warm up as they rapidly descend slopes (foehn winds) set the stage for what is likely Antarctica’s new heat record.
While the Antarctic Peninsula is rapidly warming, the greater Antarctic continent is still a sprawling, frigid landmass — with mountains up to their necks in ice. Antarctica’s deep, cold interior rarely reaches above 32F, the melting point of water.
But along Antarctica’s margin, where ice sheets meet the oceans, it’s relatively warmer ocean waters, not air, that are most threatening. These warmer waters eat away at the bottom of the ends of Antarctic ice sheets that float over the ocean, called ice shelves. Critically, these ice shelves meet the ocean floor and act like plugs, holding back colossal bounties of ice from flowing unimpeded into the water and potentially raising sea levels by many feet.
Today, these ice shelves are becoming destabilized. In the last thirty years, the amount of ice flowing from destabilized glaciers in West Antarctica has doubled.
Scientists are documenting the changes, vigilantly.
