Record high temperature in Antartica

The Argentinian Esperanza military base in Antarctica.
Source: The Guardian

From The Guardian:

Antarctica has logged its hottest temperature on record at an Argentinian research station with a thermometer recording 18.3C, beating the previous record by 0.8C.

The reading, taken at Esperanza on the northern tip of the continent’s peninsular, beats Antarctica’s previous record of 17.5C, set in March 2015.

A tweet from Argentina’s meteorological agency on Friday revealed the record, which said it was a new record for the station since its records started in 1961.

Antarctica’s peninsular – the area that points towards South America – is one of the fastest warming places on earth, heating by almost 3C over the past 50 years, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Almost all the region’s glaciers are melting.

The Esperanza reading breaks the warm record for the Antarctic continent. The record for the Antarctic region – that is, everywhere south of 60 degrees latitude – is 19.8C taken on Signy Island in January 1982.

Prof James Renwick, a climate scientist at Victoria University of Wellington,  said “Of course the record does need to be checked, but pending those checks, it’s a perfectly valid record and that [temperature] station is well maintained.”

“The reading is impressive as it’s only five years since the previous record was set and this is almost one degree centigrade higher. It’s a sign of the warming that has been happening there that’s much faster than the global average.  To have a new record set that quickly is surprising but who knows how long that will last? Possibly not that long at all.”

He said the temperature record at Esperanza was one of the longest-running on the whole continent.

Prof Nerilie Abram, a climate scientist at the Australian National University, has carried out research at James Ross Island at the northern tip of the peninsular.

“It’s an area that’s warming very quickly,” she said, adding it can occasionally be warm enough to wear a t-shirt.

Previous research from 2012 found the current rate of warming in the region was almost unprecedented over the past 2000 years.

Abram said: “Even small increases in warming can lead to large increases in the energy you have for melting the ice. The consequences are the collapse of the ice shelves along the peninsular.”

Meltwater can work its way through cracks in ice shelves, she said. Because ice shelves already float on the ocean, their collapse does not directly contribute to rising sea levels.

But Abram said the shelves acted as plugs, helping to keep the ice sheets behind them stable. Melting of ice sheets does contribute to rising sea levels because they are attached to land.

[Read more here.  I remind readers of this blog that it is currently midsummer in the southern hemisphere]