Warmer than here in Minnesota? Natonal Geographic is monitoring it:
Scientists have measured what is likely the highest temperature ever on Antarctica: 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit (17.5 Celsius).
The measurements were made last Tuesday at Argentina’s Esperanza Base, on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, according to the meteorological website Weather Underground. The previous hottest known temperature on the continent was 62.8°F (17.1°C), recorded at Esperanza Base on April 24, 1961.
Some raw information on Antarctica temperatures and the general problem of gathering data in such an extreme place is available from Oak Ridge National Lab:
Recording Antarctic station data is particularly prone to errors. This is mostly due to climatic extremes, the nature of Antarctic science, and the variability of meteorological staff at Antarctic stations (high turnover and sometimes untrained meteorological staff).
Result summary?
The annual series shows a warming over the past 40 years but most of this warming occurred before 1970. Table 1 lists the warming trends and their significance based on the t-test for each month of the year. Table 2 lists the anomaly series for 1957-1999. An increase in the annual surface temperatures is shown over this period (1.53C per century), with the largest trend apparent in the winter months, as found for northern hemisphere polar regions (Weller, 1998). This can be compared with the Jacka and Budd (1998) finding of a continent-wide warming of 1.2C per century. The greater variability in the winter season is indicative of a lower significance of the change than in the other seasons. A decrease in Antarctic surface temperatures is found for some months (April and May).
Surface temperature trends are seen to rise quite steadily up until 1991. In that year Mount Pinatubo (Philippines) and Mount Hudson (Chile) erupted, and it has been suggested (Jacka & Budd, 1998) that these eruptions have had a major influence on the general lowering of temperatures after that year.
A complex and difficult undertaking.
On a less sober note, over at the Daily Kos Pakalolo contrasts the report with the Senate GOP. This reminds me of the Karl Rove meltdown on Fox News as he denied his party had lost – ideology over reality. Andrew Sullivan was on the case back in 2012:
This looks like it was scripted by Ricky Gervais. I watched with my jaw slowly dropping lower and lower (which was hard since I was smiling so widely as well). James Poniewozik calls it “one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen on cable news”
Having just typed “2012”, I’m a little dismayed as the GOP categorization of ideology over reality started at least with Rep Newt Gingrich, who served as House Speaker 1995 – 1999, resigning abruptly after losing five seats in the midterm elections – a collision with reality. So this is wenty years of something I would categorize as near-insanity. It’s certainly been entertaining (which I appreciate – really!), but at some point you have to wish there’d be a little maturity, a little understanding that your refusal to accept reality could result in a lot of people getting hurt. It’s quite one thing for former Rep Bachmann to compare Obama to the Germanwings suicide, because, offensive as it is, few take her seriously, and the details of the Iranian deal need deliberate analysis by foreign policy experts – not the cacklings of someone whose claim to fame is founding a caucus and precious little otherwise. But when a sitting Senator writes a book denouncing the findings of honest (but who needs to add that they’re honest?) climate change scientists as a mass conspiracy and hoax, well, now you have a problem because if the good Senator is wrong, every moment spent being obstructive rather than working on the problem may cost lives; wait long enough, and there will be substantial change to our lifestyles, our life expectancies – even our national security.
And that’s not the conservative thing to do. Not that I labor under the delusion that the GOP is ‘conservative’. They are reactionaries, but that’s not the same thing as being conservative.
