jocrebbin/iStock(NEW YORK) — Images out of a northern region of Antarctica show a landscape nearly devoid of ice and snow after record-setting temperatures last week.
Video taken near in the Chilean Antarctic Territory, on the continent’s peninsula, show mountain bases with mere patches of snow and sections of ocean topped with little to no ice.
Last Thursday, the Esperanza Base, a year-round Argentine research center on the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula, recorded a temperature of 18.3 degrees Celsius — nearly 65 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Argentina’s national meteorological service.
The previous record was set in the same location in March 2015 at 17.5 degrees C, or 63.5 degrees F.
The amount of ice lost annually from the Antarctic has increased six-fold from 1979 to 2017, the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations’ authoritative voice on weather, climate and water, said in a statement last week.
Despite the spike in temperatures, snow has continued to fall in Fildes Bay, on an archipelago north of the peninsula between King George Island and Nelson Island, scientists said.
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