A bay on King George Island in Antarctica, January 16, 2020. - Federico Anfitti / EFE / SIPA

It's a record of heat that makes your back cold. Antarctica recorded a temperature record of more than 20.75 degrees in February, breaking the 20 ° C mark for the first time, Brazilian researcher Carlos Schaefer announced on Thursday. This record was recorded on February 9 on Seymour Island, also known as Marambio.

It's a sign "something different is happening"

"We have never seen such a high temperature in Antarctica," said the scientist. However, he stressed that this data "is not valid as a trend of climate change". "It's just a sign that something different is happening in this region." “We cannot use this to anticipate climate change in the future. It is a given ”at a precise moment, he insisted.

Carlos Schaefer, who specializes in the study of permafrost, said that this survey was carried out as part of a twenty-year research project designed to study the impact of climate change on permanently frozen soils. On February 6, a record temperature of 18.3 degrees had already been recorded on the Argentinian base Esperanza. The previous record, of 17.5 ° C dated back to March 24, 2015, according to the Argentine National Meteorological Service.

#Antarctic #SeaIce coverage in January was 190,000 square miles below #avg - tying January 2011 as 10th smallest #January coverage on record: @NOAANCEIclimate https://t.co/Y88Yf1yBud #StateOfClimate pic.twitter.com/m6XdwcjV75

- NOAA (@NOAA) February 13, 2020

After a record decade, which ended with a year 2019 which was the second hottest ever recorded on the planet, the 2020s are therefore starting on the same trend. January 2020 was the hottest January ever recorded on the planet, just ahead of 2016, according to the European service Copernicus on climate change, as well as according to the American atmospheric and oceanic agency (NOAA). The latter published its estimate on Thursday: the average temperature on the surface of the globe was 1.14 ° C higher than the average of the 20th century, and the highest since the beginning of the surveys in 1880.

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  • Global warming
  • Planet
  • Heat
  • Antarctic