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It’s 70 degrees warmer than normal in eastern Antarctica.

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The coldest location on the planet has experienced an episode of warm weather
this week unlike any ever observed, with temperatures over the eastern
Antarctic ice sheet soaring 50 to 90 degrees above normal. The warmth has
smashed records and shocked scientists.



“This event is completely unprecedented and upended our expectations about the
Antarctic climate system,” said Jonathan Wille, a researcher studying polar
meteorology at Université Grenoble Alpes in France, in an email.



“Antarctic climatology has been rewritten,” tweeted Stefano Di Battista, a
researcher who has published studies on Antarctic temperatures. He added that
such temperature anomalies would have been considered “impossible” and
“unthinkable” before they actually occurred.




Parts of eastern Antarctica have seen temperatures hover 70 degrees (40
Celsius) above normal for three days and counting, Wille said. He likened the
event to the June heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, which scientists
concluded would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate
change.


Sea ice over Antarctica just shrank to its smallest on record



What is considered “warm” over the frozen, barren confines of eastern
Antarctica is, of course, relative. Instead of temperatures being minus-50 or
minus-60 degrees (minus-45 or minus-51 Celsius), they’ve been closer to zero
or 10 degrees (minus-18 Celsius or minus-12 Celsius) — but that’s a massive
heat wave by Antarctic standards.



The average high temperature in Vostok — at the center of the eastern ice
sheet — is around minus-63 (minus-53 Celsius) in March. But on Friday, the
temperature leaped to zero (minus-17.7 Celsius), the warmest it’s been there
during March since record keeping began 65 years ago. It broke the previous
monthly record by a staggering 27 degrees (15 Celsius).



“In about 65 record years in Vostok, between March and October, values ​​above
-30°C were never observed,” wrote Di Battista in an email.



Vostok, a Russian meteorological observatory, is about 808 miles from the
South Pole and sits 11,444 feet above sea level. It’s famous for holding the
lowest temperature ever observed on Earth: minus-128.6 degrees (minus-89.2
Celsius), set on July 21, 1983.



Temperatures running at least 50 degrees (32 Celsius) above normal have
expanded over vast portions of eastern Antarctica from the Adélie Coast
through much of the eastern ice sheet’s interior. Some computer model
simulations and observations suggest temperatures may have even climbed up to
90 degrees (50 Celsius) above normal in a few areas.



Eastern Antarctica’s Concordia research station, operated by France and Italy
and about 350 miles from Vostok, climbed to 10 degrees (minus-12.2 Celsius),
its highest temperature on record for any month of the year. Average high
temperatures in March are around minus-56 (minus-48.7 Celsius).





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