Antarctic Cold Hits 44-Year Low for October
As spring gives way to summer in Antarctica, the South Pole has recorded its coldest October air temperature in over four decades.
On Thursday morning, the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station registered a temperature of minus 61.3 degrees Celsius, or minus 81.4 degrees Fahrenheit. This marks the lowest October reading since 1981, when the mercury dropped to minus 72 degrees Celsius. The record low for the station is minus 82.8 degrees Celsius.
The Amundsen–Scott Station, located at the geographic South Pole, sits atop Antarctica’s high plateau at an elevation of 2,835 metres above sea level. It is operated by the United States Antarctic Program under the National Science Foundation and serves as a hub for scientific research in one of the most remote and inhospitable places on Earth. The station is named after Roald Amundsen and Robert F. Scott, the Norwegian and British explorers who led rival expeditions to the pole in the summer of 1911 and 1912.
While the South Pole endures record cold, the surrounding sea ice tells a different story. Data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center reveals that Antarctic sea ice reached a winter maximum of 17.81 million square kilometres on September 17th. This is the third-smallest extent recorded since satellite observations began 47 years ago and falls 900,000 square kilometres short of the 1981 to 2010 average.
At the opposite end of the planet, Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum on September 10th, measuring 1.6 million square kilometres. This ties with the years 2008 and 2010 as the joint tenth-lowest extent in the satellite record.
