Photo: NASA
About a fifth of snow on one of Antarctica’s islandshas vanisheddue to a recent heat wave.
Record-breaking warm temperatures the continent experienced from Feb. 5 to Feb. 13 managed to melt 20 percent of snow on Eagle Island — an island located on the northwestern peninsula of Antarctica — in a matter of days, according to theNASA Earth Observatory.
Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College, told NASA’s publishing outlet that four inches of Eagle Island’s snowpack thawed away following a warm spell earlier this month, exposing much of the land beneath the island’s ice cap and creating pools of meltwater on its surface.
“I haven’t seen melt ponds develop this quickly in Antarctica,” said Pelto. “You see these kinds of melt events in Alaska and Greenland, but not usually in Antarctica.”
Scientists experienced thehottest day ever recordedon the continent on Feb. 6 when the temperature at Antarctica’s Esperanza base reached 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3 degrees Celsius), surpassing the previous record of 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit (17.5 degrees Celsius) set on March 24, 2015 at the same base, according to Argentina’s national meteorological service (SMN).
Adriana Tamayo/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty
Argentina has been tracking temperatures from Esperanza since 1961, while records from Marambio date back to 1971.
The Antarctic Peninsula — the northwest tip near South America where the two Argentinian bases are located — is among the fastest warming areas in in the world, rising almost 37.4 degrees Fahrenheit (20.78 degrees Celsius) over the last 50 years, according to theWorld Meteorological Organization(WMO).
The amount of ice lost annually from the Antarctic ice sheet have also increased at least six-fold between 1979 and 2017, the organization said.
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The years 2017, 2015 and 2018 followed closely behind in third, fourth and fifth place, respectively, NOAA reported.
Researchers were able to conclude that the average temperature across Earth in 2019 was 1.71 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average, making it the 43rd consecutive year where the land and water temperatures were above average, according to NOAA.
source: people.com
