- In July, East Antarctica experienced a heat wave.
- On some days the temperature was up to 28 degrees Celsius higher than expected for this time of year.
- The average for the month in parts of the eastern continent is 10 degrees above normal.
Global warming is progressing fastest in the polar regions, and attention is drawn primarily to the north of the globe. The threat is less visible in the south, but that is where the greatest risk lies. Antarctica is covered by a massive ice sheet, holding gigantic reserves of ice, and any signs of its instability immediately arouse the interest of scientists. And fears. “Something incredible is happening in eastern Antarctica” – this is how the journalists of the “Washington Post” announce their text on the weather profile on the X service.
Antarctica with surprising warmth
The Earth's northern hemisphere is experiencing this years huge heatwave. Records are being broken in Asia (mainly China), the Middle East and North America. Heat is also hitting various places in Europeprimarily in the Mediterranean basin, but also in France, and in Poland we had entire weeks with temperatures remaining around 30 degrees Celsius.
But it was also exceptionally warm in East Antarctica. This is significant because it is now the middle of winter there, and the continent is immersed in darkness. Despite this, the temperature at the ground level was as much as 28 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) above the norm for this time of year, experts calculated, and it was described by journalists from the American “The Washington Post” and the British “The Guardian”. This is the second such large heat wave in Antarctica in the last two years. We wrote about the previous one in this text: In the Arctic 20, in the Antarctic 40 degrees above normal. At the same time. “The record books are being rewritten”>>>
Of course, we are talking about the Antarctic winter, so this heat still means temperatures below zero on the Celsius scale (around -20). However, this is still the largest such temperature anomaly on Earth in recent times. The average for the station at the South Pole was initially -54 degrees Celsius, 6.2 degrees above the norm from 1991-2020. This means the warmest July since 2002 – noted Stefano Di Battista, a meteorologist dealing with the Antarctic climate. He emphasized that the average for July 20-30 was -47.5 degrees Celsius – “it's like the end of February/beginning of March” – he said – i.e. the end of the Antarctic summer.
The July average across large swaths of East Antarctica was 10 degrees above the long-term norm, which experts say is even more significant. One of them, Michael Dukes of the British forecasting centre MetDesk, told the Guardian it was a good example of the impact of anthropogenic climate change on the polar regions. “You can't usually look at just one month to determine the climate trend, but this one is consistent with what the models predict,” he added.
What does it mean?
The numbers and statistics themselves are impressive, but the key is of course the conclusions and potential effects. And these can be worrying. “In Antarctica, this type of warming in winter and continuing into the summer months can lead to the collapse of the ice sheet,” noted Michael Dukes. “This heat wave is a near-record event (or a record) for the region of Antarctica that it has the greatest impact on,” Edward Blanchard, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, told “The Washington Post.” He emphasized that the large extent of the heat wave is also unusual.
East Antarctica has long been seen as a more stable part of the continent, one that is unlikely to be affected by global warming. When we hear or read about large ice shelves breaking up, it is happening in the west of the continent. This is where Thwaites, nicknamed the “glacier of doom”. In recent years, however, scientists have been increasingly changing their assessment of this matter and are looking east with increasing concern. And it is East Antarctica that occupies the greater part of the icy continent.
Where did this July heat come from? In addition to the impact of ongoing global warming, scientists also see a potential effect of the El Nino phenomenon. This is a natural, cyclically recurring phenomenon that occurs in the equatorial part of the Pacific, but has a warming effect on weather around the world. The last El Nino was exceptionally strong. The weakening of the polar vortex was supposed to raise temperatures directly.