Over the past 12 months, Antarctica has experienced exceptionally cold. In 2021, the continent had the coldest winter in history. Let’s see what the latest analyzes show.
COLD RECORD in ANTARCTICA: is a NEW GLACIATION underway?
# In April, the temperature dropped to minus 70.6° C in Antarctica. In 2021 the coldest winter in history on the continent
The -70.6° C recorded on Sunday 3 April 2022 at the Vostok station confirms the trend underway in Antarctica in the last 12 months, where there was an exceptional cold. Indeed, the continent’s “winter”, between April and September 2021, was the coldest ever recorded in history. Returning to the data for the current year, from March 19 to today, according to data from the Climate Change Institute of the University of Maine, temperatures have remained below the average of the 1979-2000 period throughout Antarctica.
# The frozen surface has been growing steadily for 40 years
Further confirmation of this cooling comes from the steady increase in the ice sheet over the past 40 years. Barring a decline between 2020 and 2021 to the levels of 30 years ago, the trend shows a 1% increase in the ice surface. Official data show that East Antarctica, which covers two thirds of the South Pole, has cooled by 2.8° C over the past 40 years, and West Antarctica by 1.6° C. The warming recorded in the Antarctic Peninsula, a small strip of Antarctica, in addition to being reduced in terms of impact, is therefore also insignificant from the point of view of the affected surface.
# There was also exceptional cold in Europe
Even in Europe, the cold wave led to new records for the month of April in Austria, Germany, Spain and France where the night of April 4 was the coldest since 1947 and where in Les Pontets the temperature dropped to -21.6° C. In the Tyrrhenian Sea in some places of Corsica and Sardinia the previous records of the month of April have been beaten.
FABIO MARCOMIN
(Original article By FENICE)
