Temperature in Antarctica Soars Past 69°F as NOAA Reports Last Month Was World's Hottest January on Record

It may or may not already too late to stop irreversible catastrophic climate change, civilization collapse, and extinction for most life on Earth. We’ve been warned over and over again for decades about our imminent peril, and yet the complicit corporate media and the .1% and the predatory capitalist politicians they’ve bought continue along with their criminal greed, inaction, denial, distraction, disinformation, and running candidates for the presidency who — other than Bernie Sanders — have no intention to declare a climate emergency and immediately allocate funding proportionate to the climate crisis and implement the Green New Deal — in other words the enormous systemic changes that are vital to any chance of saving a livable planet for our children and grandchildren and all of Earth’s inhabitants. This madness of our collective denial and refusal to act upon the dire planetary emergency we’re in must end! — Molly

A view of Adelie Penguins on Seymour Island during a voyage to Antarctica on a ship called "Le Diamant" during February 2006.

While the reading in Antarctica still needs to be confirmed, the Brazilian scientists who logged it called the new record "incredible and abnormal."

By

Jessica Corbett

As the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday announced that last month was the hottest January ever recorded, the Guardian reported that Brazilian scientists logged a new record-breaking temperature of 20.75°C, or 69.35°F, at Seymour Island in Antarctica on Feb. 9.

The newspaper noted that the new record, along with one logged on Feb. 6 by Argentina's Esperanza research station at the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula, "will need to be confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization, but they are consistent with a broader trend on the peninsula and nearby islands, which have warmed by almost 3°C since the pre-industrial era—one of the fastest rates on the planet."

Scientists working for Terrantar, a Brazilian government climate monitoring project in the Antarctic, described the latest record as "incredible and abnormal," according to the Guardian. As scientist Carlos Schaefer put it: "We are seeing the warming trend in many of the sites we are monitoring, but we have never seen anything like this."

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