Antarctica temps go above 20 C for 1st time ever
16 February, 2020
Scientists in Antarctica have recorded a new record temperature of 20.75 C, breaking the barrier of 20 C for the first time on the continent, a researcher said Thursday.
“We’d never seen a temperature this saturated in Antarctica,” Brazilian scientist Carlos Schaefer said.
He cautioned that the reading, taken at a monitoring station on an island off the continent’s northern tip on Feb. 9, “does not have any meaning regarding a climate-change trend,” because it is a one-off temperature and not part of a long-term data set.
But news that the icy continent is currently recording temperatures in the relatively balmy 20s will probably further fuel fears about the warming of the earth.
The reading was taken at Seymour Island, part of a chain off the peninsula that curves right out of the northern tip of Antarctica. The island houses Argentina’s Marambio research base.
Schaefer, a soil scientist, said the reading was taken within a 20-year-old research study on the impact of climate change on the region’s permafrost.
The prior high was in the 19s, he said.
“We can’t use this to anticipate climatic changes in the foreseeable future. It’s a data point,” he said. “It’s just a signal that something different is happening for the reason that area.”
Still, he added, a temperature that high had never been registered in Antarctica.
Accelerating melt-off from glaciers and especially ice sheets in Antarctica is helping drive sea level rises, threatening coastal megacities and small island nations.
The news came a week after Argentina’s National Meteorological Service recorded the latest day on record for Argentine Antarctica: 18.3C at midday at the Esperanza base, located nearby the tip of the Antarctic peninsula.
The prior record stood at 17.5 C on March 24, 2015, it said. It's been recording Antarctic temperatures since 1961.
The past decade has been the hottest on record, the United Nations said last month, with 2019 the second-hottest year ever, after 2016. And 2020 looks set to keep the trend: last month was the latest January on record.
Source: the-japan-news.com