A Balmy Part Of Antarctica Is Scaring People Worried About Climate Change

Esperanza Base, Antarctica just recorded the icy continent's hottest
temperature on record - 65 degrees. Photo via NBC News
by Vanderlei Almeda/AFP and Getty Images

A temperature of 65 degrees isn't all that hot.  It's nice, sure, but nothing extreme.

Unless you're in Antarctica.

Last week, a research center and weather station called Esperanza Base  on the northern edge of Antarctica's Trinity Peninsula got up to 64.9 degrees, which is the hottest temperature on record in that frigid continent at the bottom of the world.

The old record for Antarctica was 63.5 degrees on March 24, 2015.

True, the Trinity Peninsula is the toastiest part of Antarctica, jutting north toward South America. It's the area of Antarctica that's furthest away from the South Pole, so it is bound to be warmer than the rest of this icy continent.

Still, the area around the Trinity Peninsula, and much of the area around Antarctica has been warming rapidly in recent decades so this does alarm climate scientists.

"To have a new record set that quickly is surprising - but who knows how long that will last? Possibly not that long at all," James Renwick of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand told The Guardian. 

Some caveats to this Antarctic warm record: The area where this warm temperature was set is prone to balmy  northerly winds coming down the slopes of nearby mountains. So this warm day was surely a natural, normal event, probably made a little more extreme by climate change.

Usually, these warm winds allow temperatures at Esperanza Base to rise to only 50 degrees or so.

The 65-degree record is preliminary and will need to be verified by experts.

Scientists are alarmed by warming around Antarctica because certain glaciers and ice shelves are prone to melting in a warmer world. That would contribute to destructive global sea level rise.

About 87 percent of glaciers along the west coast of Trinity Peninsula have retreated over the past 50 years, and that trend has accelerated over the past dozen years or so, according to the World Meteorological Organization, as reported by NBC News.