The temperature at the Concordia Research Station on Dome C on the Antarctic Plateau — typically known as the coldest place on Earth — rose to a staggering 11.3 degrees Fahrenheit on March 18.
The normal high for the day is about minus 56, making the March 18 reading about 70 degrees warmer than normal.
If the World Meteorological Organization actually tracked that particular metric, scientists say it would likely set a world record.
It “appears to have set a new world record for the largest excess temperature above normal … ever measured at an established weather station,” Robert Rohde, Berkeley Earth’s principal scientist, tweeted Monday.
Randall Cerveny, a professor of geographic sciences at Arizona State University and rapporteur on extreme records at the World Meteorological Organization, told CNN that type of record — how much above or below normal — is not something the WMO tracks or pursues checked.
But still, he said, this reading looks real.
“Everything I’ve personally seen of the observation of Dome C indicates that it’s a legitimate observation,” Cerveny told CNN.
While 11 degrees is by no means warm, it’s unheard of for this part of Antarctica, and 70 degrees above average is similarly amazing.
It would be as if Monday’s maximum temperature in Washington, DC – normally 61 degrees – was an unimaginable 131 degrees. In reality, on March 28th it was the warmest there has ever been with 85 degrees.
The coldest place on earth?
Concordia’s temperature set a record for the highest temperature not only in the month of March, but an “all-time record” for any month. after Etienne KapikianMeteorologist at Meteo-France, the French meteorological service.
And it wasn’t the only place to set record-breaking temperatures that day.
Vostok, the Russian research base famous for measuring the world’s coldest temperature, reported a high temperature of zero degrees Fahrenheit – 63 degrees warmer than the day’s average. The temperature shook the station’s previous record for March by almost 27 degrees.
With more than 60 years of data, this record is “unprecedented in the history of climatology,” according to an analysis by Meteo-France.
A unique combination of meteorological events had to occur for Mother Nature to turn up the heat in East Antarctica that day.
“In any event, a very interesting and unusual set of meteorological events triggered this event,” Cerveny told CNN.
There was “the wet inflow of an atmospheric flow” — storms that drag large amounts of ocean moisture over land, similar to what the West Coast sees in winter, Cerveny said. And very hot air also entered the Antarctic plateau, which is rare for this time of year.
The arrival of moisture trapped the hot air and caused temperatures in East Antarctica to skyrocket.
Though it was rare, there’s a chance these atmospheric components may have come together before the time people were around to record them, John King, a researcher with the British Antarctic Survey, told CNN.
“The Antarctic climate observation network is quite sparse and almost nonexistent prior to the mid-1950s,” King said.
The extreme heat in Antarctica raises concerns about long-term effects on the ice, especially if it continues. An Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of Los Angeles melted away within days of exceptional warmth on the continent.
But King noted that the impact of a single, short-lived, even if the March 18 heat “will always be small.”
“Although such events would become more frequent in the future, it would have a significant impact,” King said.