The United Nations World Meteorological Organization has confirmed that Antarctica logged temperatures up to 18.3 degrees Celsius, a new maximum temperature record for the region, on February 6 earlier this year.
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With this, Antarctica has now become one of the fastest-warming regions in the world — registering a rise of almost three degrees Celsius in the last 50 years.
According to the UN agency, the high temperatures in Antarctica are a result of a large high-pressure system creating “fohn conditions”, which are downslope winds creating significant surface warming.
The record was established after an extensive review conducted by the WMO’s Weather and Climate Extremes Archive on the weather situation in the Antarctica peninsula.
It, however, debunked reports suggesting that the Antarctic region crossed 20.7 degrees Celsius (69.3 degrees Fahrenheit) on February 9 last year.
