Antarctica logs 15.4C on Trinity peninsula in June heat
Researchers in antarctica logged temperatures as high as 15.4 degrees Celsius on the Trinity peninsula on June 6, a reading that left surface ice melting during a month when snow should have been building. Raúl Cordero, a climate professor at the University of Groningen, said the temperature was about 20C above normal for that time of year.
Temperatures in parts of Antarctica reached 36 degrees Fahrenheit above average in June. Cordero called the reading “This is absolutely crazy,” and added, “It is also about 20C above normal for this time of the year. That is a huge anomaly.”
Collins Glacier on the peninsula
Last weekend, Luis Muñoz and a colleague climbed to the top of the Collins glacier on the very northwestern tip of the peninsula. Muñoz said, “temperatures here went very high so everything outside melted.” He said, “Usually there is 20cm of snow and a lot of ice on the ground at this time,” but instead rain fell during the trek, and the precipitation was warm enough to melt the surface ice.
Muñoz said, “There was a direct impact on the glacier, which should be receiving snow now. It should not be suffering ablation at this time of the year. This is obviously not good for the glacier.” The comment puts the June heat into a more immediate frame: the glacier was not just warm, it was losing surface ice when accumulation should have been taking place.
Strong westerlies since the 1980s
Cordero said, “This heatwave happened because of extremely strong westerlies,” and said the stronger westerlies have been happening with increasing frequency since the 1980s. The June reading also came against the backdrop of the world’s second-warmest May in recorded history, while scientists were scrambling to set up monitoring instruments along the fast-melting Thwaites glacier.
Those efforts ran into limits of their own: scientists largely failed to deposit long-term monitoring equipment underneath the Thwaites glacier, even as snapshot measurements from waters beneath it showed temperatures warmer than scientific models had assumed. Nicholas Golledge, a Te Herenga Waka climate professor and study co-author, said, “Under a scenario in which global temperatures rise by approximately 3.5 to 4C above pre-industrial levels, increased surface melting around the continent will leave ice shelves much more vulnerable to rapid collapse and sea-level rise,” adding, “In an extreme scenario where warming rises above 4C, the risk of rapid collapse becomes even more pronounced.”
The next step in the science is not a diplomatic meeting but more measurement: researchers are trying to capture how quickly Antarctic surface melt is changing before 2100, while the Collins glacier and Thwaites continue to offer the clearest field evidence that summer-like conditions are reaching places where winter conditions should still dominate.
