6 January 2012

World Turned Upside Down-All Time Record Warmth At The South Pole

Posted by Dan Satterfield

I snapped this shot of my friend Chaz Firestone doing a handstand at the South Pole.

It’s high summer in Antarctica right now and on Christmas Day the all time record high at Amundsen Scot Station was broken. The temperature reached  a balmy -12.3º C. That is just a hair under 10ºF. While that may sound cold to you, for a spot at the bottom of the world that is sitting on top of two miles of ice, that’s amazing.

A normal summer day at the Pole would see temperatures of around -30ºC or about – 22ºF. It would not be unusual to see it a few degrees colder even. Above zero on the Fahrenheit scale is rare there.

Other records were broken as well and the data below is courtesy the South Pole met office and the Space Science Eng. Center at the Univ. of Wisconsin.

  • December 24th: The peak wind speed of 29 kts/33 mph broke the previous record of 28 kts/32 mph set in 1996.
  • December 24th: The temperature of -13.3°C/8.1°F broke the previous maximum temperature record of -15.7°C/3.7°F set in 1984.
  • December 25th: The temperature of -12.3°C/9.9°F broke the previous maximum temperature record of -17.2°C/1.0°F set in 1978.
  • December 25th: The temperature of -12.3°C/9.9°F broke the record for the all-time maximum temperature at South Pole.  The previous record of -13.6°C/7.7°F was set on December 27, 1978.
  • December 30th: The peak wind speed of 25 kts/29 mph broke the previous record of 21 kts/24 mph set in 1989.