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Temperatures on the Antarctic continent reached a record - break high of 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit ( 17.5 arcdegree Celsius ) in 2015 , agree to a new news report of balmy record book for the bottom of the world .
And things nonplus even toastier back on Jan. 30 , 1982 , when the thermometer peaked at 67.6 degrees F ( 19.8 degrees ampere-second ) at Signy Research Station on Antarctica ’s Signy Island , according to the World Meteorological Organization ( WMO ) , a division of the United Nations . This temperature was the highest on criminal record for the Antarctic region , an area include all land and ice south of 60 degrees south parallel of latitude , the WMO said .
Antartica is seeing record-breaking, spring-like temperatures.
When WMO expert looked at just the continent itself ( the area including the continent and its nearby islands ) , they obtain that the lovesome temperature — a positively balmy 63.5 degrees F — happen on March 24 , 2015 , at the Argentine Esperanza Base research place , locate by the northern pourboire of the Antarctic Peninsula . [ Images of Melt : Earth ’s Vanishing Ice ]
The highest temperature for the Antarctic Plateau ( an area with an altitude of 8,200 feet , or 2,500 m ) reached 19.4 degrees F ( minus 7 degrees 100 ) at the Automatic Weather Station on the Adélie Coast on Dec. 28 , 1980 , the write up found .
These high temperatures are a large difference from the continent ’s broken recorded temperature of minus 128.6 degrees F ( minus 89.2 degrees C ) at Vostok Station on July 21 , 1983 , the WMO said .
The WMOpublished the reportonline today ( March 1 ) in a continuing exertion to expand its universal database on utmost weather and climate status , the system read . The database will help the World Meteorological Organization learn about of course occurring climate variety , as well as human - bring on climate variety along world-wide and regional levels , WMO officials sound out .
Usually , Antarctica is inhuman , windy and ironic , the WMO say . The average annual temperature ranges from about 14 degrees F ( minus 10 degree ascorbic acid ) on the Antarctic sea-coast to about minus 76 degrees F ( minus 60 level C ) in Antarctica ’s higher - ALT Interior Department , the WMO aver .
Moreover , Antarctica ’s ice canvass stop 90 percent of the mankind ’s freshwater , and if the ice tabloid were to melt , it wouldraise sea levelby about 200 feet ( 60 m ) . That ’s discomfit , given that the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest - warm up regions of the planet , having warm by almost 5.4 degree F ( 3 degrees C ) over the past 50 years , the WMO said .
In addition , about 87 percentage of glaciers along the Antarctic Peninsula ’s west coast have back away over the past 50 years , especially in the past 12 years , the World Meteorological Organization added .
Alarming temperatures
The warming can be felt up even during short visits down to the south , enounce Jamin Greenbaum , a postdoctoral inquiry fellow at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics , who was not involved in the new report .
" I justreturned from Antarctica a few weeksago , where I catch , firsthand , how warm it was there , " Greenbaum say Live Science . " It was my tenth straight fieldwork experience down there , and I ’ve never see so much airfoil meltwater — it was singular . "
Meltwater is the outcome of high temperature that can melt the airfoil of the Methedrine and snow , Greenbaum said . Meltwater is fairly alarming , he say , because it can lead to the rapid retirement of coastal ice , as well as sea - level upgrade .
" There was so much [ meltwater ] that even a large subdivision of the Charles Percy Snow road we take every day collapsed , forcing us to apply eggbeater to convert between the research post and the field , " Greenbaum said . [ In picture : Huge Icebergs Break Off Antarctica ]
Another Antarctic expert , Eric Steig , read that " these temperatures are very probably associated with the extremely strong ocean ice loss . " But the origin of that expiration " is in reality unclear at the moment , " said Steig , an adjunct professor of Earth and space skill at the University of Washington , who was not involved in the report .
The new report may help scientist figure out what ’s behind these high-pitched temperature . For representative , the WMO ’s Commission for Climatology outside evaluation committee found that the record at all three station assume piazza during an influx of warm airwave .
The WMO scientist and their fellow worker hope to learn more , and they aim to increase conditions forecasting capability during the Year of Polar Prediction projection , which will last from mid-2017 to mid-2019 , the WMO said .
Original clause onLive scientific discipline .
