“Not a good sign”: the poles withstand temperatures higher than normal

The Earth’s poles are experiencing abnormal simultaneous extreme heat, with parts of the Antarctic at temperatures 40°C above average and parts of the Arctic above 30°C above normal.

Antarctica’s weather stations broke records Friday as the region moved closer to fall. The Concordia station, located at an altitude of 3,234 meters, registered a temperature of minus 12.2°C, which is about 40°C above average, while the Vostok station, located even higher, reached 17, 7 ° C below zero, exceeding according to a tweet by Maximiliano Herrera, an expert who tracks extreme weather records.

The Terra Nova Base on the coast was 7°C, well above freezing.

This caught officials at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, off guard because they were paying attention to the Arctic, which was 30°C warmer than average, and areas around the North Pole were approaching or already they were at the melting point, which they are, said center scientist Walt Meier.

“They have opposite seasons. You don’t see North and South (poles) melting at the same time.” Meier told The Associated Press on Friday night. “This is definitely an unusual event”Held.

“It’s pretty amazing” added.

“Wow. I have never seen anything like this in Antarctica.” said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado who recently returned from an expedition to that continent.

“It’s not a good sign when you see something like that happen.”said Matthew Lazzara, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin.

Lazzara tracks temperatures at Dome C-ii in eastern Antarctica, and on Friday it recorded minus 10°C, when normal is minus 43°C. “That’s a temperature you should see in January, not March. ”, declared.

Both Lazzara and Meier said what happened in Antarctica is probably just a random weather event and not an indication of climate change. But if it happens again or repeatedly, then it could be something to worry about and part of global warming, they said.

The Washington Post was the first to report on the hot spell in Antarctica.

The Antarctic continent as a whole was about 4.8°C warmer than the 1979-2000 baseline temperature on Friday, according to the University of Maine Climate Reanalyzer, based on climate models from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. United States (NOAA). it’s as if the entire United States is 4.4°C warmer than normal, Meier said.

At the same time, the Arctic as a whole was 3.3°C warmer on Friday than the average from 1979 to 2000.

By comparison, the world as a whole was just 0.6°C above the 1979 to 2000 average. Globally, the 1979 to 2000 average is about .3°C warmer than the 20th century average.

What makes the warming of Antarctica really strange is that the southern continent – except for its vulnerable peninsula, which is rapidly warming and losing ice – hasn’t warmed very much, especially when compared to the rest of the globe. Meier said.

Antarctica did set a record for the lowest sea ice in the summer — records go back to 1979 — when the Snow and Ice Data Center reported it. What likely happened was “a big atmospheric river” pumping warm, moist air from the Pacific to the south, Meier said.

And in the Arctic, which has been warming two to three times faster than the rest of the globe and is considered vulnerable to climate change, warm air from the Atlantic was rising north off the coast of Greenland.

With information from AP and Emol

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