The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Friday confirmed that the record temperature of 18.3 degrees Celsius was measured on the continent of Antarctica in February 2020.

The WMO always reviews whether the measuring devices are recording the correct temperatures before confirming such a record.

The previous record stood at 17.5 degrees in 2015.

“The Antarctic Peninsula (the north-west tip near to South America) is among the fastest warming regions of the planet, almost 3 degrees Celsius over the last 50 years. This new temperature record is therefore consistent with the climate change we are observing,” said WMO chief Petteri Taalas.

Another high temperature – 20.75 degrees – that was measured also in February 2020 at a Brazilian permafrost observation station on the island of Seymour was not confirmed. The station was specialized in permafrost observation and not equipped for accurate air temperature measurements, the WMO found.

Antarctica‘s glaciers and ice caps are built through snowfall and drain off into the ocean near the coasts. If they are drained off more, this influences the sea level, according to Alexander Haumann of Princeton University.

“Such an increase has been seen in western Antarctica over the last 30 years, and the increase is faster than any strong drainage of the ice seen since the last ice age,” Haumann said.

“However, we still don’t know in detail if and how this increase is related to human-made climate change,” he added.

“We know that it has to do, among other things, with warmer sea water in the coastal regions, which engenders the melting of the shelf ice, which conversely usually prevents the drainage of the glaciers,” he said.

“But here we have to consider that this contribution of Antarctice to the global rise of sea levels has only been about 10 per cent over the last 30 years,” he added.

Source: dpa/MIA