Antarctica Deeply Impacted! Devastating Record & What is Behind This Threatening Change? (Videos)
3-3-17
From Protect Mother Earth
Antarctica’s record high temperature may surprise you
Temperatures on the Antarctic continent reached a record-breaking high of 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit in 2015, according to a new report of balmy records for the bottom of the world.
And things got even toastier back on Jan. 30, 1982, when the thermometer peaked at 67.6 degrees F 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 record for the Antarctic region, an area including all land and ice south of 60 degrees south latitude, the WMO said.
When WMO experts looked at just the continent itself (the area including the continent and its nearby islands), they found that the warmest temperature — a positively balmy 63.5 degrees F — happened on March 24, 2015, at the Argentine Esperanza Base research station, located by the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.
The highest temperature for the Antarctic Plateau (an area with an elevation of 8,200 feet, or 2,500 meters) reached 19.4 degrees F at the Automatic Weather Station on the Adélie Coast on Dec. 28, 1980, the report found.
Antarctica’s disappearing penguins reveal impact of climate change
In CBS Climate Dairies, Mark Phillips continues his reporting from Antarctica, one of the most remote places on earth. He shows us the dramatic shifts happening around a half-century old research base. The icescape and the area’s penguin population reveal the impact of the rapid pace of climate change.
The Southern Ocean’s legendary winds have been blowing more fiercely and in a more poleward direction since the 1950s. Temperature observations are sparse around the hostile continent, but scientists recently modeled the ocean current knock-on effects of these wind changes, which have been caused by ozone thinning and by the buildup of greenhouse gases.
The scientists were blown away by the vicious climate change feedback that they unearthed.
Source: http://www.climatecentral.org
