Antarctic temperatures rise 10C above average, experts are calling it a near-record heatwave

The ground temperature across ice sheet-Antarctica soared at an average of 10 degree Celsius above normal over the past month. The concerning and rare phenomenon is being described as a near record heatwave at one of world’s coldest places.

The world experienced 12 months of record warmth, with temperatures consistently exceeding the 1.5 degree Celsius rise above preindustrial levels that has been touted as the limit to avoiding the worst of climate overhaul.

While on the polar land mass, temperatures have remained below zero, the depths of southern hemisphere winter have reportedly reached 28 degrees Celsius above expectations on some days.

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Michael Dukes, the director of forecasting at MetDesk, said that while individual daily high temperatures were surprising, far more significant was the average rise over the month.

The models created by climate scientists have long predicted that the most significant effects of anthropogenic climate change would be on polar regions, “and this is a great example of that”, Dukes said.

“Usually you can’t just look at one month for a climate trend but it is right in line with what models predict,” he added.

“In Antarctica generally that kind of warming in the winter and continuing in to summer months can lead to collapsing of the ice sheets," Dukes further said.

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This year in July, it was the first time in 14 months that temperature records were not broken.

Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, said Antarctica’s heatwave had “definitely been one of the bigger drivers in the spike of global temperatures in recent weeks”.

“Antarctica as a whole has warmed along with the world over the past 50 years, and for that matter 150 years, so any heatwave is starting off from that elevated baseline,” he said and added, “But it’s safe to say that the majority of the spike in the last month was driven by the heatwave.”

What is making the Antarctic region so warm?

In the past two years,heatwave has hit twice in the region, with the last being in March 2022, when temperature spiked to 39 degrees Celsius, causing a portion of the ice sheet the size of Rome to collapse!

Here also, we have El Nino to blame as Antarctica’s increased July temperatures follow a particularly strong El Nino.

This climate phenomenon has led to warming around the world in combination with the general increase in temperatures caused by climate breakdown, Dukes said.

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However, some experts attribute the heatwave in Antarctica to a weeks-long “southern stratospheric warming event” over the region.

“Those are really rare over Antarctica, so it wasn’t really quite clear how that would affect surface conditions on the continent,” said Jonathan Wille, a researcher studying climate science at ETH Zürich, a public research university in Zürich, Switzerland.

Thoughthere “seem to be more and more frequent heatwaves over the continent”, it was not yet clear how much of a factor the climate crisis had been in creating this particular event, said Dukes.

(With inputs from agencies)