Temperatures in Antarctica break all-year records

Climate change is making itself felt: in the Antarctic, experts have measured temperatures that were 30 degrees Celsius higher than usual during the season. The consequences could be fatal.

In the east of Antarctica, unusually high temperatures have been measured in the past few days, which experts say were more than 30 degrees Celsius higher than usual for the time of year. The Dome Concordia research station at an altitude of 3,000 meters registered a “heat” record of minus 11.5 degrees Celsius on Friday, meteorologist Etienne Kapikian from Météo-France said on Twitter on Saturday.

Typically, temperatures in Antarctica fall with the end of summer in the southern hemisphere. The Dumont d’Urville station registered a record temperature of 4.9 degrees Celsius for the month of March. March 18th was the coldest with 0.2 degrees plus. At this time of the year, temperatures are usually already below zero. The unusually mild weather in the east of the icy continent is a “historic event,” said Gaetan Heymes of Météo-France.

“This is the moment when temperatures should drop rapidly after December’s summer solstice,” Grenoble geoscientist Jonathan Wille said on Twitter. “This heatwave in Antarctica is changing what we thought was possible for Antarctic weather,” he added.

Even if it is not possible at the moment of an event to attribute it to climate change, one of the clearest signs of global warming is the accumulation and intensification of heat waves. The poles are heating up faster than the rest of the planet, which has an average temperature 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.c