Comment on the temperature rise in Antarctica as per the newspaper report.(recently)
Answers
The Antarctic has registered a temperature of more than 20C (68F) for the first time on record, prompting fears of climate instability in the world’s greatest repository of ice.
The 20.75C logged by Brazilian scientists at Seymour Island on 9 February was almost a full degree higher than the previous record of 19.8C, taken on Signy Island in January 1982.
It follows another recent temperature record: on 6 February an Argentinian research station at Esperanza measured 18.3C, which was the highest reading on the continental Antarctic peninsula.
These records will need to be confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization, but they are consistent with a broader trend on the peninsula and nearby islands, which have warmed by almost 3C since the pre-industrial era – one of the fastest rates on the planet.
Scientists, who collect the data from remote monitoring stations every three days, described the new record as “incredible and abnormal”.
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“We are seeing the warming trend in many of the sites we are monitoring, but we have never seen anything like this,” said Carlos Schaefer, who works on Terrantar, a Brazilian government project that monitors the impact of climate change on permafrost and biology at 23 sites in the Antarctic.
Schaefer said the temperature of the peninsula, the South Shetland Islands and the James Ross archipelago, which Seymour is part of, has been erratic over the past 20 years. After cooling in the first decade of this century, it has warmed rapidly.
Answer:
A record high temperature of 18.3C (64.9F) has been logged on the continent of Antarctica.
The reading, taken on Thursday by Argentine research base Esperanza, is 0.8C hotter than the previous peak temperature of 17.5C, in March 2015.
The temperature was recorded in the Antarctic Peninsula, on the continent's north-west tip - one of the fastest-warming regions on earth.
It is being verified by the UN World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).
"[This] is not a figure you would normally associate with Antarctica, even in the summertime," WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis told reporters in Geneva.
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Temperatures on the Antarctic continent have risen by almost 3C over the past 50 years, the organisation said, and about 87% of the glaciers along its west coast have "retreated" in that time.
The glaciers have shown an "accelerated retreat" in the past 12 years, the WMO added, due to global warming.
Scientists warn that global warming is causing so much melting at the South Pole, it will eventually disintegrate - causing the global sea level to rise by at least three metres (10ft) over centuries.
Ms Nullis added: "The amount of ice lost annually from the Antarctic ice sheet increased at least six-fold between 1979 and 2017.The melting from these glaciers, you know, means we are in big trouble when it comes to sea level rise."
While 18.3C is a record for the Antarctic continent, the record in the wider Antarctic region - which includes the continent, islands and ocean that are in the Antarctic climatic zone - is 19.8C, logged in January 1982.
Last July, the Arctic region hit its own record temperature of 21C, logged by a base at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.