EASTERN ANTARCTICA HAS recently recorded high temperatures more than 30 degrees Celsius above normal, experts have said. 

A similar situation has also been reported in the Arctic. The Guardian reports that weather stations near the north pole showed temperatures also 30 degrees Celsius above normal. 

A Norwegian climate scientist tweeted last week that a weather station on an Arctic island recently recorded its highest ever temperature during March. 

The EU’s Commissioner for the Environment Virginijus Sinkevičius said the temperatures at the Earth’s poles are “unprecedented & can signal a faster climate breakdown”.

The Concordia research base at Dome C of the Antarctic, which is at an altitude of 3,000 metres, on Friday registered a record -11.5 degrees Celsius, Etienne Kapikian, a meteorologist from France-Meteo tweeted.

Normally, temperatures fall with the end of the southern summer, but the Dumont d’Urville station on Antarctica registered record temperatures for March with 4.9C, at a time of year when normally temperatures are below zero. 

Gaetan Heymes of France Meteo described the unseasonably mild weather as a “historic event”.

Geoscientist Jonathan Wille wrote on Twitter: “And there it is, Concordia broke its all time record temperature by 1.5°C.

“This is when temperatures should be rapidly falling since the summer solstice in December.

“This is a Pacific Northwest 2021 heat wave kind of event,” he added. “Never supposed to happen.”

The unprecedented temperatures come after the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the United States said Antarctica’s sea ice fell below two million square kilometres in late February for the first time since 1979.

A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released last year said it is virtually certain that the Arctic will continue to warm at around two times the average rate of global warming.

The world has already warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. 

Contains reporting by AFP.