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submitted 8 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

An unprecedented leap of 38.5C in the coldest place on Earth is a harbinger of a disaster for humans and the local ecosystem

On 18 March, 2022, scientists at the Concordia research station on the east Antarctic plateau documented a remarkable event. They recorded the largest jump in temperature ever measured at a meteorological centre on Earth. According to their instruments, the region that day experienced a rise of 38.5C above its seasonal average: a world record.

This startling leap – in the coldest place on the planet – left polar researchers struggling for words to describe it. “It is simply mind-boggling,” said Prof Michael Meredith, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey. “In sub-zero temperatures such a massive leap is tolerable but if we had a 40C rise in the UK now that would take temperatures for a spring day to over 50C – and that would be deadly for the population.”

This amazement was shared by glaciologist Prof Martin Siegert, of the University of Exeter. “No one in our community thought that anything like this could ever happen. It is extraordinary and a real concern,” he told the Observer. “We are now having to wrestle with something that is completely unprecedented.”

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[-] HubertManne@kbin.social 6 points 8 months ago

yeas 30 degress is not half of 60 because zero is just an arbitrary placement but temperature is most definately scalar. 10 degrees higher at 100 is the same as 0 degrees the reason in everything except of kelvin and its ilk the halving does not work is because the zero point is not truly zero, not because the difference in degrees are different at any point in the scale.

this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
256 points (99.2% liked)

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