Weird Antarctic Heat Wave Might Not Directly Affect Us, But Scientists Are Freaked Out

Scientists at the Concordia station in Antarctica recently
dressed for the beach as temperatures shattered previous
all-time records for heat. It wasn't the tropical paradise
depicted in the photo. That record smashing high 
temperature was 10 degrees above zero. 

  As frigid Antarctic heads into their even more bone chilling autumn, a strange heat wave earlier this month  has shocked scientists. 

Temperatures on the eastern Antarctic ice sheet were 50 to 70 degrees above normal. Scientists on site even stripped down to shorts and t-shirts or no shirts outdoors to mark the unprecedented event, the Washington Post reported.

The departures from normal were likely the largest recorded on Earth.

It wasn't exactly a tropical vacation, however. This is the most frigid part of the globe and temperatures in much of the area affected by the extreme Antarctic "heat" stayed well below freezing.

For instance, the Russian observatory Vostok, just 808 miles from the South Pole and 11,444 feet above sea level so is frigid. In March, the average high temperature there is a gelid 63 below zero Fahrenheit. In the record heat wave this month, Vostok hit an even 0 degrees Fahrenheit, which shattered the previous March record high by 27 degrees, the Washington Post reported. 

The ever so slightly Concordia Research Station in Antarctica reached 10 degrees above zero during the hot spell, which was the all-time hottest temperature there. The old record was 7 degrees and the normal high temperature in March at Concordia is 56 below, says the Washington Post. 

Remember, this is March, so Antarctica is past their summer, so to speak. 

Still these readings really are unheard of.  For perspective, when we have record heat in Vermont, temperatures are usually 20 or 30 degrees above normal. If temperatures were 70 degrees above normal in Burlington today,  The hottest it's ever been in Burlington is 101 degrees.   

Temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic often get further above and below normal than in places in the mid latitudes, like here in Vermont. In those places, readings can be 30 or 40 degrees above or below normal with some regularity at the poles.

But 70 above normal is not something scientists have seen. Even at or near the Earth's poles. 

Caused by atmospheric river, a narrow corridor of very warm, wet air that came inland from the Pacific Ocean near Antarctica.   Despite the exceptional warmth, and some rain, it was not toasty enough to cause significant ice melt.  Had this occurred earlier in the Antarctic "summer" the melt would have been worse, the Washington Post notes. 

At least a large portion of this odd heat was probably just a random event.  But it was so extreme that scientists are still very concerned.  Especially since "unprecedented" heat waves keep popping up around the globe. 

Jonathan Wille, a researcher studying polar meteorology at Grenoble Alpes University in France told the Washington Post, comparing an unprecedented heat wave in the northwestern United States and southwestern Canada last June, and the heat wave that just hit Antarctica.  that the heat wave

"...was something that wasn't thought to be possible until it actually happened. It was never observed before, and the atmospheric patterns that led to it happening were just not thought to be possible either until it happens. And that's what's basically happened here over Antarctica."

IT'S COMPLICATED

Antarctica, seemingly a vast, frozen and still place, has a lot of moving parts. With climate change looming,  many of these shifting pieces worry scientists. 

It's not just heat waves that melt Antarctic ice from above that you need to worry about. 

Even if surface areas in large parts of Antarctica stay cold enough such that not much melts, ocean water that is slightly warmer than it used to be can sneak beneath the ice shelves floating on the water and clinging to the edges of the continent. 

This can enable the ice shelves to melt from below, eventually weakening them or even breaking them up.  With the ice shelves out of the picture, glaciers on Antarctica's land are more free to flow faster into the water, where they will melt and raise sea level s globally. 

There's one ice shelf in particular, called Thwaites, that is already showing signs of instability. If it goes, a glacier behind it would move quickly (at least relatively so for a glacier) into the ocean.  If, theoretically just that one glacier were to entirely melt, global sea levels would rise by a little more than two feet. Not good. 

What you might call summer in Antarctica is about to end, and climate scientists might be especially grateful for that this year. 

Sea ice extent around Antarctica reached its lowest level since the first starting keeping track of it back in 1979.

That sounds like a sure sign that climate change is asserting itself, but in the case of Antarctica, not really. Or at least we don't know. 

The Guardian helps us sort out this year's lack of Antarctic sea ice as follows:

"Dr. Walt Meier, a senior research scientist with the NSIDC, said it coincided with strong wins over part of the Ross Sea that had pulled ice to the north, where it melted in warmer waters or was broken up by waves.

This pushed the sea ice extent - the area of the ocean covered by at least 15 percent floating ice - to below the previous record set in 2017. But scientists expressed caution about attributing the retreat to the increase in global temperatures linked to greenhouse gas emissions."

Unlike the Arctic, which has really been losing over the past couple of decades, Antarctica has been all over the place.

Antarctic sea ice extent had been often setting record highs up through 2014, but in the past eight years it's been generally declining.  That's too short a time to conclusively pin the blame on climate change. 

The best that scientists can say is "maybe." According to the Guardian:

"Dr. Will Hobbs, who studies Antarctic sea ice with the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, said the latest record was significant. There had been an expectation that after the record low of 2017 the ice would recover he said. 

'But now we have these two events in five years that are off the records,' he said. 'You can't say this is climate change, but we do now have to consider whether or not the system is starting to change.'"

The reason why we care about sea ice at the bottom of the world is that it helps keep the massive Antarctic ice cap in place. Lose the sea ice, and the Antarctic ice cap starts melting and sliding off into the sea.  Let that go on too much and global sea levels rise dramatically.  

The sea level is already going up at a faster pace than it did just decades ago and it's going to get fastest yet, and soon, as I reported back on February 15.

So yeah, climate scientists are really interested in what's going on in Antarctica.  There's plenty of research going on. .

Here's an example, according to According to Vox: 

"New research finds that some of the most profound changes to Earth's ice are largely invisible because they're happening far beneath the surface. Land ice and ice shelves are wearing thin from below and it's happening much faster than previously expected."

The chilly air above the South Pole tends to keep ice frozen from above and around its edges. But deep Antarctic waters aren't quite as frigid. 'At a depth in the Southern Ocean, there is a tremendous amount of heat energy below a few hundred meters down' said (British Antarctic Survey geophysicist Robert Larter). This warmer water can then come into contact with the underside of ice shelves, causing them to melt. 

The water in question is barely above freezing. However, if it warms up just a bit, that can make a big difference. 

There's a LOT we don't know about Antarctica, and how what happens there is related to climate change. We do know that what happens in Antarctica doesn't necessarily stay in Antarctica. Yeah, it's a distant, unpopulated place. But with climate change, it's still a place that can come back to bite us.