Balmy! Antarctica Hit Record-Breaking 63 Degrees F in 2015 [View all]
Balmy! Antarctica Hit Record-Breaking 63 Degrees F in 2015
By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | March 2, 2017 06:55am ET
Temperatures on the Antarctic continent reached a record-breaking high of 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit (17.5 degrees Celsius) in 2015, according to a new report of balmy records for the bottom of the world.
And things got even toastier back on Jan. 30, 1982, when the thermometer peaked at 67.6 degrees F (19.8 degrees C) at Signy Research Station on Antarctica's Signy Island, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a division of the United Nations. This temperature was the highest on record for the Antarctic region, an area including all land and ice south of 60 degrees south latitude, the WMO said.
When WMO experts looked at just the continent itself (the area including the continent and its nearby islands), they found that the warmest temperature — a positively balmy 63.5 degrees F — happened on March 24, 2015, at the Argentine Esperanza Base research station, located by the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. [Images of Melt: Earth's Vanishing Ice]
The highest temperature for the Antarctic Plateau (an area with an elevation of 8,200 feet, or 2,500 meters) reached 19.4 degrees F (minus 7 degrees C) at the Automatic Weather Station on the Adélie Coast on Dec. 28, 1980, the report found.
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