The World Meteorological Organization’s Weather and Climate Extremes Archive is responsible for adjudicating potential records to ensure consistency and legitimacy. The announcement of their findings, which occurred Thursday morning, comes during the same week as a blistering, unprecedented heat wave scorches the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, establishing a new all-time national record high in Canada three days in a row. On Monday, Lytton, British Columbia hit 121 degrees.
The 2020 reading in Antarctica beat out the previous record of 63.5 degrees, which occurred March 24, 2015. Multiple stations recorded temperatures approaching or exceeding 60 degrees during the multiday event, which resulted from a combination of warm high pressure, broad sinking air and a “foehn” wind. The latter describes a downsloping breeze, or winds sliding downhill, which have a tendency to warm as they slosh into interior valleys.
Over the past 50 years, 87 percent of glaciers on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula have retreated, particularly in the past decade. Temperatures during that time frame have warmed roughly 5 degrees on average, but some scientists were initially hesitant to pin the record on climate change alone, citing dramatic year to year variability in summer temperatures.