Economy

Temperature in Antarctica Drops to Minus 90 Degrees

Paul Ausick

Published: May 27, 2016 8:40 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 7:29 am

As Americans head into the Memorial Day holiday and the beginning of summer, at the southern end of the planet winter is on its way. A weather station on Antarctica reported a low temperature of -90.4 degrees F early Friday, but colder weather is still to come.

The official world record cold temperature is -128.6 degrees F set at another Antarctic station in July 1983. The unofficial record, obtained by satellite, was posted in August 2010 at -135.8 degrees F. The average winter temperature at the South Pole is around -56 degrees F.

It’s not a particular surprise that it’s cold at this time of year at the South Pole. But just over a year ago, on March 24, 2015, an Argentine weather station on Antarctica registered a high temperature of 63.5 degrees F, the highest ever recorded. Prior to that the highest temperature recorded on the seventh continent was 62.8 degrees F in 1961.

An article published last year at ThinkProgress noted the rapid warming at both the North and South Poles:

[T]he poles are warming faster than any part of the planet and rapid ice melt is being observed at increased rates in Antarctica. According to a new study, ice shelves in West Antarctica have lost as much as 18 percent of their volume over the last two decades, with rapid acceleration occurring over the last decade. The study found that from 1994 to 2003, the overall loss of ice shelf volume across the continent was negligible, but over the last decade West Antarctic losses increased by 70 percent.

According to the British Antarctic Survey, since records for the Antarctic Peninsula began half a century ago, the average temperature has risen about 5°F, making it “the most rapidly warming region in the Southern Hemisphere – comparable to rapidly warming regions of the Arctic.”

At the same time that Antarctica is headed for the deep-freeze of winter, the Indian subcontinent is recorded record heat. Friday’s high temperature in Sibi, Pakistan, reached nearly 117 degrees F, just ahead of a high of 115.5 degrees F in Ramgundam, India. Earlier this month India recorded its highest-ever temperature of 123.8 degrees F in a town in the northwest part of the country.

The drought accompanying India’s current heat wave is affecting about a quarter of the country’s population of 1.25 billion (about equal to the total U.S. population). Last year 2,135 people died in India during the summer heat wave.

The official world record high temperature stands at 134 degrees F, set in 1913 in Death Valley, California.