The Earth's poles are experiencing abnormal simultaneous extreme heat, with parts of Antarctica at temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius (more than 70 degrees Fahrenheit) above average and areas of the Arctic above 30 degrees C (50 degrees F) than normal.
Antarctica's weather stations broke records on Friday as the region approaches autumn. Concordia Station, located at 3,234 meters (two miles) above average, recorded a temperature of 12.2 degrees C below zero (10 F), which is about 40 degrees Celsius (more than 70 F) above average, while the still higher Vostok Station reached 17.7 degrees C below zero (0 F), exceeding its historic mark by about 15 degrees centigrade (about 27 F), according to a tweet by Maximiliano Herrera, an expert who tracks extreme weather records.
The Terra Nova Base on the coast was at 7 degrees C (44.6 F), well above freezing.
This caught officials at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado off guard because they were paying attention to the Arctic, whose temperature was 30 degrees C (50 F) warmer than average, and areas around the North Pole were approaching or already at the melting point, which is really unusual by mid-March, said the center's scientist Walt Meier.
“They have opposite seasons. You don't see (the poles) North and South melting at the same time,” Meier told The Associated Press Friday night. “This is definitely an unusual event.”
“It's quite surprising,” he added.
“Wow. I've never seen anything like this in Antarctica,” said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado, who recently returned from an expedition to that continent.
“It's not a good sign when you see such a thing happen,” said Matthew Lazzara, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin.
Lazzara tracks temperatures at Dome C-ii in eastern Antarctica, and on Friday it recorded 10 degrees C below zero (14 F), when the normal is 43 degrees Celsius below zero (45 F below zero): “That's a temperature you should see in January, not in March. January is summer there. It's dramatic,” he said.
Both Lazzara and Meier said that what happened in Antarctica is probably just a fortuitous weather event and not an indication of climate change. But if it happens again or repeatedly then it could be something worrying and part of global warming, they said.
The Washington Post was the first to report the heat spell in Antarctica.
The Antarctic continent as a whole was about 4.8 degrees C (8.6 F) warmer on Friday than the reference temperature from 1979 to 2000, according to the University of Maine Climate Analyzer, based on climate models from the United States National Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Management (NOAA). That temperature of 4.4 degrees Celsius (8 F) above an already warmer average is unusual; it is as if the entire United States is 4.4 degrees Celsius (8 F) warmer than normal, Meier said.
At the same time, the Arctic as a whole was 3.3 degrees Celsius (6 F) warmer on Friday than the 1979-2000 average.
By comparison, the world as a whole was only 0.6 degrees C (1.1 F) above the average for 1979 to 2000. Globally, the average from 1979 to 2000 is about .3 degrees Celsius (.5 F) warmer than the average for the 20th century.
What makes Antarctic warming really strange is that that southern continent — except for its vulnerable peninsula that is rapidly warming and losing ice — hasn't warmed up much, especially when compared to the rest of the globe, Meier said.
Antarctica did set a record for the lowest sea ice in the summer—records date back to 1979_, when it contracted to 1.9 million square kilometers (741,000 square miles) at the end of February, the snow and ice data center reported.
What probably happened was that “a large atmospheric river” pumped warm, humid air from the Pacific to the south, Meier said.
And in the Arctic, which has been warming two or three times faster than the rest of the globe and is considered vulnerable to climate change, warm Atlantic air was rising north off the coast of Greenland.
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Seth Borenstein is on Twitter as: @borenbears.
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The Associated Press receives support for its climate and environmental coverage from various private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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