Antarctica Keeps Breaking Temperature Records: Here's Why That Should Scare You
On Thursday, February 6th, 2020 the sun was shining on the Argentine research station Esperanza, and despite a breeze, the weather was pleasant, if not balmy.[1] T-shirt weather -- good for relaxing in the sun or going for a hike. The station recorded a temperature of 18.3 °C, or about 65 °F: nothing too out of the ordinary. Except, you know, if you’re in Antarctica. In that case, it’s a new record, beating out the previous record, set in 2015, by a full degree.[2]
Not even a full week later, on February 9th, that new record was shattered again: a monitoring station on the remote Seymour Island recorded a temperature of 20.75 °C, or nearly 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now, full disclosure about Seymour Island: it looks like a very nice island, and isn’t what you’d necessarily associate with Antarctica. A short 750-mile hop and a skip from the southern tip of South America, surrounded by crystal blue waters free of ice and largely free of snow itself, the penguin colonies and lack of plant life are the only clue to its polar location. This island lies off the northernmost coast of Antarctica, and has a somewhat more temperate climate than areas further south.
A temperature reading this high, however, is alarming. While researchers who study this area, such as Brazilian scientist Carlos Schaeffer, will stress that this is just a single reading and “not part of a long-term data set,” the fact remains that high-temperature records for the continent keep getting shattered, not just every decade or even every year but, in this case, twice in a single week.[3]
The coldest temperature ever recorded by a weather station in Antarctica -- and on planet earth -- was -89 °C. The temperature was recorded by the Soviets at Vostok Station, in July 1983.[4]
So why does it matter that Antarctica keeps breaking these records? It matters because these are not isolated incidents. It would be one thing if it were just a few records getting broken, but the whole continent is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet. There are multiple reasons for this warming: as more and more sea ice melts each year, the decreased albedo (ice reflectivity) causes the surrounding oceans to absorb increasingly more heat. And as the oceans heat up and storms become more powerful, these storms, which migrate poleward, transfer their thermal energy into the atmosphere, causing even more warming in the Arctic and Antarctica.[5]
Some conservative commentators, in an attempt to deny or obfuscate climate science, have insisted that Antarctica is actually gaining ice.[6] This claim is drawn from a highly controversial 2015 study (that has been heavily disputed by subsequent studies), and misses the larger point; Antarctica is warming. It is warming faster than the rest of the planet. And there’s enough ice in the Antarctic ice sheet to completely submerge every coastal city on the planet, rising sea levels by over 200 feet.[7]
Will this happen any time in the near future? Of course not. Most estimates say it would take several thousand years of sustained warming to melt the entirety of the Antarctic ice sheet. Problem is, we don’t need that to happen for us to face some major crises. If 1% of Antarctica’s ice melts, that’s still enough of a change to put Miami underwater, and make several other cities in this country alone unsafe or uninhabitable.
Is Antarctica the only source of our current sea level rise? No, but much of it comes from Greenland as well, which, being a polar landmass, is also warming and melting at a startling rate. This is compounded by the fact that warm water is less dense. As oceans warm, sea levels will rise even further.
Antarctica may be a case of “out of sight, out of mind” for most Americans. Hell, you’re probably surprised to be reading about it in a magazine about politics. Many people don’t even know it’s a continent at all, with jagged peaks taller than most of the Alps running down its spine. But sooner or later, as the world’s waters continue to rise, we’ll have to stop thinking about Antarctica in the abstract, and start thinking about the very real ways in which its glacial melt affects everyday life in coastal cities worldwide. Because as cities around the world become inundated by rising seas and powerful storms, we know what will follow: a refugee crisis the likes of which have never been seen since World War II.
It’s ironic that a continent with zero permanent residents will soon contribute to a massive humanitarian disaster likely to affect billions and displace millions of people. For now, the most important thing we can do is understand the science of climate change and sea-level rise, communicate its significance, and take action at the local, national, and global level. Because while one warm day in Antarctica may not seem significant, a rapidly warming continent will one day affect us all.
Source:
“Past Weather in Esperanza Base, Antarctica - Yesterday and Last 2 Weeks.” timeanddate.com. Accessed February 21, 2020.
“Antarctica Logs Highest Temperature on Record of 18.3C.” BBC News. BBC, February 7, 2020.
“Antarctic Island Hits Record Temperature of 20.75C.” BBC News. BBC, February 14, 2020.
“New Study Explains Antarctica's Coldest Temperatures.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, June 25, 2018.
Dunbar, Brian. “What's Causing the Poles to Warm Faster than the Rest of Earth?” NASA. NASA, June 4, 2011.
Kluger, Jeffrey. “How High Will Sea Levels Rise as Antarctica's Ice Melts?” Time. Time, September 12, 2019.