Recently, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has revealed a series of images of melting Antarctica snow during an early February week recording the 'hottest temperature of the year' in the continent.
According to a report published by NASA, on February 6, Argentina’s Esperanza Base, a research station on Antarctica’s Trinity Peninsula, recorded a temperature of 18.3°C (64.9°F), which was equal to that of Los Angeles that day. NASA further noted that the second hottest temperature of 17.5 C (63.5 degrees Fahrenheit) was recorded five years back in March 2015.
While the World Meteorological Department is still verifying the reading's accuracy, NASA released the shocking images of meting ponds melting during that week.
According to the report, "The warm temperatures arrived on February 5 and continued until February 13, 2020. The images above show melting on the ice cap of Eagle Island and were acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 on February 4 and February 13, 2020."
The second image released showed "about 20% of the island’s seasonal snow accumulation had melted."
As per a HuffPost report glaciologist Mauri Pelto of Massachusett’s Nichols College explained that such an extensive melting is caused by 'a sustained period of temperatures above freezing'.
NASA said that following warm spells in November 2019 and Januray 2020, this February heatwave was the third major melt event of the 2019-2020 summer.
It added, “If you think about this one event in February, it isn’t that significant,” said Pelto. “It’s more significant that these events are coming more frequently.“
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