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Heatwave in Antarctica could beat record 0:36
(CNN) - A nine-day heat wave hit the north end of Antarctica earlier this month. New images from NASA reveal that almost a quarter of the snow cover of an Antarctic island melted at that time, an increasingly common symptom of the climate crisis.
The images show Eagle Island, in the northeastern peninsula of the icy continent, at the beginning and end of this month's Antarctic heat wave. At the end of the nine-day heat event, much of the land beneath the island's ice sheet was exposed and puddles of melting water opened on its surface.
Antarctica experienced its hottest day recorded earlier this month, reaching a maximum of 18 degrees Celsius. Los Angeles had the same temperature that day, NASA said.
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In just over a week, more than 10 centimeters of the Eagle Island snow cap melted, that's about 20% of the island's total seasonal snow accumulation, said the NASA Earth Observatory.
"I have not seen melting puddles develop so fast in Antarctica," Mauri Pelto, a geologist at Nichols College in Massachusetts, told NASA's Earth Observatory. "You see these types of melting events in Alaska and Greenland, but not usually in Antarctica."
Climate scientist Xavier Fettweis measured the amount of meltwater that reached the ocean from the Antarctic Peninsula. The heat wave was the one that contributed the most to sea level rise this summer, he said.
Just to give you an idea, I have plotted the amount of meltwater reaching ocean from Peninsula as simulated by MAR forced by GFS. Although the absolute numbers need to be confirmed, the recent warm event was well the highest sea level contribution of this summer. https://t.co/kZPfcS2I2U pic.twitter.com/sNQtM8B1yJ
- Xavier Fettweis (@xavierfettweis) February 21, 2020
A perfect storm of conditions for a heat wave
As Pelot pointed out, melting events like this are quite rare for Antarctica, even during the summer. It is one of the coldest places on Earth.
This heat wave was the result of sustained high temperatures, he said, which almost never occurred on the continent until the 21st century. It is the type of climatic event that becomes increasingly common as global temperatures rise.
This month, high pressure on Cape Horn in the Chilean archipelago allowed warm temperatures to accumulate and travel. The northernmost peninsula of Antarctica is generally protected from these high temperatures due to the strong winds that cross the southern hemisphere, but those winds were unusually weak and could not prevent high temperatures from penetrating the northern tip of the continent, NASA reported .
Polar ice caps or layers of ice in Antarctica are already melting rapidly due to contamination by gases that trap heat from humans. The rising sea level could be catastrophic for the millions of people living along the world's coasts: according to the World Meteorological Organization, the ice sheets of Antarctica contain enough water to raise the global sea level by more of 60 meters.
And earlier this month, a huge iceberg along the western edge of Antarctica broke away from the Pine Island glacier. The piece of ice over 300 square kilometers probably fractured as a result of warmer sea temperatures, and it is evidence that the glacier is responding rapidly to climate change, the European Space Agency said.
- Drew Kann and Brandon Miller of CNN contributed to this report.
AntarcticaNASA