Images arriving from a Chilean scientific base in Antarctica are alarming. On 6 February, temperatures reached 18.3 degrees Celsius.
Update 16:00 – For the first time in history, Antarctica has recorded a temperature above 20 degrees Celsius. The thermometer reached 20.7 degrees at Seymour Island, surpassing by almost one degree the previous record set in January 1982 at Signy Island.
Snow-covered rooftops, a white landscape, red and blue houses standing out against the icy blanket. The Chilean scientific base at Fildes Bay has always looked like this. But since the end of last December, the place has been completely transformed. Snow has given way to brown earth — on the ground as on the surrounding hills. The images taken by the researchers are alarming.
"The melting of the ice is a direct consequence of excessively high temperatures. We have reached over 13 degrees Celsius," Erasmos Macaya, a scientist from the University of Concepción, explained to Reuters. The Fildes Bay base represents in this sense a frontier of the climate crisis: here, between 1979 and 2017, the amount of ice that melts each year has increased sixfold.
And in the rest of Antarctica, the situation does not appear to be any different. On Thursday 6 February, an extraordinary temperature was reached in Argentina: 18.3 degrees at the Esperanza scientific base, following the 17.5 degrees recorded on 24 March 2015.
The heatwave swept across the entire South American nation, with a perceived high of 42 degrees in the capital Buenos Aires, as reported by the Ansa agency. Likewise, at the permanent Argentine base of Marambio, the mercury reached 14.1 degrees.
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"What we are witnessing is very worrying," commented Claire Nullis, spokesperson for the World Meteorological Organization. "Antarctica is one of the regions warming most rapidly on the planet. Over the past 50 years, the temperature has risen by around 3 degrees."
A trend that will also cause a dangerous rise in ocean levels, with global consequences.
