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by Sergi González Herrero, The Conversation
Record-breaking temperature levels throughout the heatwave on 6 February 2020. Credit: González-Herrero et al. (2022)
Recently, Antarctica has actually experienced a series of unmatched heat waves. On 6 February 2020, temperature levels of 18.3 ° C were tape-recorded, the greatest ever seen on the continent, beating the previous record of 17.5 ° C which had actually just been set a couple of years previously.
Around February 2022, another strong heat wave in Antarctica caused record-breaking surface area ice melt. In March of the exact same year, East Antarctica saw its greatest ever heat wave, with temperature levels skyrocketing to 30 ° C or 40 ° C greater than the average in some locations.
Over the in 2015, we have actually seen the most affordable levels of Antarctic sea ice protection because records started.
Occasions in the last few years have actually verged on the amazing, and it is challenging not to connect them to environment modification. Research studies have actually currently emerged that plainly associate some of these heat waves to worldwide warming: one of our examinations highly recommends that without the impact of environment modification, 2020’s record-breaking temperature levels would not have actually taken place.
Antarctica’s altering environment
In 2009, a research study measured the speed of community migration due to environment modification on a worldwide scale, and recorded, basically, the speed at which specific types need to transfer to guarantee their survival. It concluded that biomes were moving at a speed in between 0.8 km and 12.6 km per years, with a typical speed of 4.2 km per years.
In our more current research study, released in February 2024, we adjusted this measurement of speed and used it to the edges of Antarctica. To do this, we tracked the southward migration of the zero-degree isotherm.
Advancement of the yearly and seasonal position of the zero-degree isotherm in Antarctica in between 1957 and 2020. The initials suggest the seasons for each measurement. MAM: fall, JJA: winter season, SON: spring, DJF: summertime. Credit: González-Herrero et al. (2024)
The zero-degree isotherm is a fictional line that confines the locations that are at absolutely no degrees or lower. Its southward motion implies that the location with temperature levels listed below no Celsius in Antarctica is getting smaller sized and smaller sized. Considered that water freezes at no degrees, this motion will have major effects for communities and for the cryosphere (locations of the Earth where water is frozen).
Our estimations reveal that the zero-degree isotherm has actually moved at a speed of 15.8 km per years because 1957 in the location surrounding the Antarctic, while on the Antarctic peninsula itself it has actually moved at 23.9 km per years. As an outcome, it now sits more than 100 km south of where it remained in the mid 20th century.
