Another ferocious summer

Summer has been hot in Antarctica. On 6 February the Argentine Antarctic station Esperanza recorded a temperature of 18.3°C, the warmest conditions ever detected at that location. On the relatively balmy Antarctic Peninsula to the south of South America — some call it Antarctica’s banana belt — that record slightly eclipsed the previous one of 17.5°C in March 2015. Only three days later, to truly emphasise that we are living in rapidly warming times, a temperature of 20.75°C was recorded at the Brazilian Marambio Base on Seymour Island, also at the northern tip of the peninsula.