• Environment: The frozen continent reached a record temperature of 17.5 degrees
  • Global warming: Antarctica, a climate enigma

Antarctica has broken its historical record for maximum temperature and reached February 18.3 ° C, according to measurements from the Argentine base Esperanza. The previous record of 17.5ºC had been set in March 2015.

The new record has triggered alarms among scientists, who have already seen the rise in temperatures by three degrees and in the last 50 years in the Antarctic Peninsula near South America, where glaciers have experienced a worrying decline in recent decades

James Renwick, climate scientist at the University of Victoria in Australia, has confirmed the convening of a special committee of the World Meteorological Organization (WHO) to certify the historical record of the Hope base.

"The reading is impressive and represents a temperature increase of almost one degree from the maximum recorded five years ago," Renwick told The Guardian . "It's one more sign that warming is happening in this area much faster than in the rest of the planet."

In the absence of WHO certification, Renwick acknowledged that the Esperanza base measurements are usually rigorous and that the maximum temperatures usually coincide in the area with strong northwest winds.

Temperatures in Antarctica have been measured regularly since 1961 . The minimum historical temperature of the planet in the last century was recorded in 1983 at Vostok's Russian base: minus 89.2ºC, in July 1983.

"It's a temperature that we don't associate with Antarctica, not even in the summer season," WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis said in Geneva.

Experts of the agency will form a special committee to verify if it is indeed a new record for the frozen continent, for which they will analyze all the data they manage to gather, according to Efe.

" It is important to verify this fact because Antarctica is an area where we do not have enough observations and the data is very scattered. Verifying records like this will help us have a clearer idea of ​​what is happening on this continent," explains Nullis.

"We talk a lot about the Arctic, but this specific part of the Antarctic Peninsula is warming up very quickly. In the last fifty years the temperature there has increased almost 3ºC, " the spokeswoman details.

The world's largest iceberg, drifting

The temperature record comes in the same week that it has been known that the giant iceberg A68, a colossus that was released from Antarctica in 2017 , has floated so far north that it is now on the edge of the perennial sea ice of the continent

When the Larsen C ice shelf in the Antarctic Peninsula was detached in July 2017, the iceberg had an area close to 6,000 square kilometers and has lost very little of its volume in the past two and a half years, Europa Press reports .

But scientists say A68 will have difficulty maintaining its integrity when it reaches the most turbulent waters of the Southern Ocean. "With a ratio of thickness to length similar to five A4 sheets, I am surprised that the ocean waves have not made A68 ice cubes," Professor Adrian Luckman of the University of Swansea, United Kingdom, tells BBC News that He says he will be "very surprised" if he survives by a single piece when he moves beyond the edge of sea ice.

During his first year, A68 barely moved, his keel apparently landed on the seabed. But the prevailing winds and currents finally began pushing it north along the eastern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, and during this summer season the drift has experienced rapid acceleration .

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