Antarctica temperatures rising as 'unprecedented heat wave' baffles scientists

Temperatures 70 degrees above normal in eastern Antarctica have baffled scientists, who say that the “unprecedented heat wave” has already changed the way experts think about the Antarctic climate system. The extreme temperature increase in East Antarctica, which is home to the coldest locations on the planet, was registered across the region, experts said. Temperatures at the Concordia Research Station, a French-Italian research station on the Antarctic Plateau, reached 10 degrees — or about 70 degrees warmer than average.

“This is when temperatures should be rapidly falling since the summer solstice in December,” Jonathan Wille, a researcher studying polar meteorology at Universite Grenoble Alpes in France, tweeted.

Russia’s Vostok station — which is located at the center of the eastern ice sheet and where the average high temperature this time is around minus 63 degrees (minus 53 Celsius) — reached a record-breaking zero degrees on Friday. The extreme weather was also registered in the Arctic, where temperatures were more than 50 degrees warmer than average.

Walt Meier, an ice scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, called the situation on both poles “pretty stunning.”
“They are opposite seasons. You don’t see the north and the south [poles] both melting at the same time,” he told The Associated Press. “It’s definitely an unusual occurrence.”

https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2022/03/antarctica-temperatures-rising-as-unprecedented-heat-wave-baffles-scientists.html