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Late last week, temperatures broke all records in both Antarctica and the Arctic, with temperatures up to 40°C above the seasonal average not far from the South Pole. According to experts, these high-levels could be linked to the variations of ‘atmospheric rivers’, as the role of climate change still has to be measured.
The world’s two polar regions simultaneously experienced unprecedented heat waves on Friday, March 18: temperatures up to 40°C above seasonal norms in Antarctica, and between 20°C and 30°C above normal in some places in the Arctic.
“Such a coincidence is very unusual,” Julienne Stroeve, a polar climate specialist at University College London, told FRANCE 24.
It was the soaring temperatures in Antarctica that first caught the scientists’ attention. “The temperatures recorded, even on the Antarctic plateau [located at over 2,000 metres of altitude], were absolutely absurd,” Jonathan Wille, a postdoctoral researcher and specialist in Antarctic weather and climate at the Institute of Environmental Geosciences at the University of Grenoble Alpes, told FRANCE 24.
Antarctic heatwave summary
1/3 For six days at Concordia (3 233 m) the values were above the monthly high (-27.9 °C on 12 March 2007) and for a day above the annual high (-13.7 °C on 17 December 2016)
Day 16 -27.0 °C
17 -16.9 °C
18 -11.5 °C
19 -14.5 °C
20 -20.4 °C
21 -23.1 °C pic.twitter.com/bCTmbKckj8— Stefano Di Battista (@pinturicchio_60) March 23, 2022
At over 3,000 metres high, -11.5°C instead of -40°C
It was more than unusually mild at the Concordia station, located at over 3,000 metres of altitude, in East Antarctica: the thermometer rose up to -11.5°C, instead of keeping between -40°C and -50°C, the region’s average…
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Source : france24
