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Monday, March 21, 2022

Both of Earth's Poles Blazing Hot*

*relatively

Both of the Earth's polar regions had a heatwave over the weekend: +30°C in the north and +40°C in Antarctica. Here's a telling graph from Berkeley Earth showing the spike in eastern Antartica:

It beat the old March record by 20°C. That just seems unreal... Here's an explanation:
"... [T]he warm conditions over Antarctica were spurred by an extreme atmospheric river, or a narrow corridor of water vapor in the sky, on its east coast. ... The excessive moisture from the atmospheric river was able to retain large amounts of heat..."
Of course it's never as simple as just "global warming," but it seems hard to imagine global warming isn't somehow behind it. We'll see what attribution studies say....

5 comments:

  1. The warming maximum described in the Antarctic may not be local. This year's Antarctic sea ice minimum was the lowest on record.

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  2. https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

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  3. EM: Good point, thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Off topic --- Those who listened to Andrew Dessler's interview with Joe Rogan might find his debate with Alex Epstein interesting.

    https://twitter.com/AndrewDessler/status/1503758267163582464

    ReplyDelete