| Title | Antarctica May Have Hit Its Highest Temperature Ever Recorded Last Tuesday | |
| Date | Thursday April 02 2015, @06:18AM | |
| Author | CoolHand | |
| Topic | ||
| from the its-getting-warmer-in-here dept. | ||
A Weather Underground reporting station at Argentina’s Esperanza Base on the Antarctic Penninsula recorded a temperature of 63.5 deg. F (17 deg. C) last Tuesday (24 Mar 2015):
Weather Underground bloggers Jeff Masters and Bob Henson write Tuesday’s 63.5F reading bests the previous record mark of 63.3F set just the day before [March 23] at Argentina’s Marambio Base (a small islet off the Antarctic Peninsula) and a prior reading of 62.8F (also from Esperanza Base) from April 24, 1961.
Tuesday’s new record is not yet official. Argentina’s Esperanza Base, the site of the record, may not be considered part of Antarctica for the purposes of weather records according to Weather Underground historian Christopher Burt. He explains four different ways Antarctica can be defined in a blog post. Ultimately, for the record to be official, the World Meteorological Organization will need to validate the temperature reading and determine it is, in fact, Antarctic.
...
This week’s possible temperature record was setup by a large, warm ridge of high pressure – or heat dome – originating from southern South America that extended over the Antarctic Peninsula. The intensity of this weather system was almost off-the-charts, judging by the purple shades on the map below, portraying the difference from normal conditions:
Perhaps those tired of winter in the Northern Hemisphere ought to consider a vacation in the balmy Antarctic Penninsula.
This story has also been covered by National Geographic and Science Recorder .
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printed from SoylentNews, Antarctica May Have Hit Its Highest Temperature Ever Recorded Last Tuesday on 2024-04-19 00:37:14