Antarctica’s warmest day: Scientists detect a record-high temperature of 18.3°C at an Argentinian weather station on the frozen continent
- Reading from the Esperanza research base was recorded at midday on Thursday
- Beats beats the previous record of 17.5°C (63.5°F) in March 2015 by 0.8°C
- This Antarctic Peninsula region is among the fastest warming regions on earth
- Temperature is approximately the same warm as an average June day in the UK
Antarctica has experienced its hottest temperature on record, with an Argentinian research station on the frozen continent clocking a balmy 18.3°C (63.5°F).
The reading from the Esperanza base was recorded at midday on Thursday and beats beats the previous record of 17.5°C (63.5°F) in March 2015 by 0.8°C.
Records at the base in Hope Bay, Trinity Peninsula, began in 1961 and the announcement was shared by the World Meteorological organisation (WMO).
The record-high temperature is around the same warmth as an average June day in Nottingham, UK, according to figures from the Met Office.
Scroll down for video
Antarctica has experienced its hottest temperature on record, with an Argentinian research station on the frozen continent clocking a balmy 18.3°C (63.5°F). The record was shared in a tweet (pictured)
SMN Argentina said in a tweet: ‘At midday Esperanza Base recorded a new historic temperature record (since 1961) of 18.3 degrees Celsius.
‘This temperature beat the previous record of 17.5 degrees Celsius recorded on March 24 2015.’
It also said the Marambio Base on Marambio Island, another Argentinian Antartica base, had recorded the highest temperature for February since 1971.
Thermometers here reached 14.1°C (57.38°F) and beating a previous high recorded in February 2013.
The Antarctic Peninsula, the northwest tip near South America, is among the fastest warming regions on earth, with temperatures rising almost 3C (5.4F) over the past 50 years, the WMO said.
Some 87 per cent of the glaciers along its west coast have ‘retreated’ over those five decades and have shown an ‘accelerated retreat’ in the past 12 years, it added.
Professor James Renwick, a climate scientist at Victoria University of Wellington, told the Guardian Australia the WMO committee would likely reconvene to ratify the new record.
He told the paper: ‘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.’
Esperanza was the site of the first ever shots fired in anger in Antartica in 1952 when an Argentinian shore party fired a machine gun over the heads of a British Antarctic Survey team unloading supplies from the R.R.S John Briscoe.
The incident ended with an Argentinian diplomatic apology.
Last month British endurance swimmer and climate activist Lewis Pugh became the first person to swim under an Antarctic ice sheet.
He performed the feat, swimming for 10 minutes and 17 seconds in the river under the melting ice in just trunks, cap and goggles, to raise awareness of climate change at the Earth’s poles.
Recent research found the rate of ice loss from five Antarctic glaciers had doubled in six years and was five times faster than in the 1990s.
HOW MUCH WILL SEA LEVELS RISE IN THE NEXT FEW CENTURIES?
Global sea levels could rise as much as 1.2 metres (4 feet) by 2300 even if we meet the 2015 Paris climate goals, scientists have warned.
The long-term change will be driven by a thaw of ice from Greenland to Antarctica that is set to re-draw global coastlines.
Sea level rise threatens cities from Shanghai to London, to low-lying swathes of Florida or Bangladesh, and to entire nations such as the Maldives.
It is vital that we curb emissions as soon as possible to avoid an even greater rise, a German-led team of researchers said in a new report.
By 2300, the report projected that sea levels would gain by 0.7-1.2 metres, even if almost 200 nations fully meet goals under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Targets set by the accords include cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero in the second half of this century.
Ocean levels will rise inexorably because heat-trapping industrial gases already emitted will linger in the atmosphere, melting more ice, it said.
In addition, water naturally expands as it warms above four degrees Celsius (39.2°F).
Every five years of delay beyond 2020 in peaking global emissions would mean an extra 20 centimetres (8 inches) of sea level rise by 2300.
‘Sea level is often communicated as a really slow process that you can’t do much about … but the next 30 years really matter,’ lead author Dr Matthias Mengel, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Potsdam, Germany, told Reuters.
None of the nearly 200 governments to sign the Paris Accords are on track to meet its pledges.
Source: Read Full Article