Jerri-Lynn here. I meant to link to news about the polar temperature surge yesterday, but was momentarily distracted and completely forgot. Mea culpa. This Common Dreams post discusses the shock and alarm scientists are expressing at the unprecedented temperature surges recorded this weekend at each of the earth’s poles – the latest manifestation of climate change. Coming less than a year after last summer’s record-busting temperatures recorded in the Pacific Northwest. the latest polar temperature surges should unsettle all but the most hardened climate change skeptics. Alas, the mess in Ukraine and the unresolved pandemic is distracting world leaders from addressing the climate change emergency.

BREAKING: simultaneous freakish heat in the Arctic and Antarctic described as ‘impossible’ and ‘unthinkable’ by scientists as abrupt climate change accelerates wildly ? pic.twitter.com/jGwovCRLeT

— Ben See (@ClimateBen) March 19, 2022

By Brett Wilkins. Originally published at Common Dreams

Scientists expressed shock and alarm this weekend amid extreme high temperatures near both of the Earth’s poles—the latest signs of the accelerating planetary climate emergency.

Temperatures in parts of Antarctica were 50°F-90°F above normal in recent days, while earlier this week the mercury soared to over 50°F higher than average—close to the freezing mark—in areas of the Arctic.

Stefano Di Battista, an Antarctic climatologist, tweeted that such record-shattering heat near the South Pole was “unthinkable” and “impossible.”

“Antarctic climatology has been rewritten,” di Battista wrote.

The joint French-Italian Concordia research station in eastern Antarctica recorded an all-time high of 10°F on Friday. In contrast, high temperatures at the station this time in March average below -50°F.

Record heat in the Arctic is driving an early melt season and crushing 2022 sea-ice extent: current rank now #4. The Antarctic is even worse.

With everything going on in the world right now, the dual polar climate disasters of 2022 should be the top story. pic.twitter.com/qsi4OAob6L

— Prof. Eliot Jacobson (@EliotJacobson) March 17, 2022

Jonathan Wille, a researcher studying polar meteorology at Université Grenoble Alpes in France, told The Washington Post that “this event is completely unprecedented and upended our expectations about the Antarctic climate system.”

“This is when temperatures should be rapidly falling since the summer solstice in December,” Wille tweeted. “This is a Pacific Northwest 2021 heatwave kind of event,” he added, referring to the record-breaking event in which parts of Canada topped 120°F for the first time in recorded history. “Never supposed to happen.”

Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, told USA Today that “you don’t see the North and the South [poles] both melting at the same time” because “they are opposite seasons.”

“It’s definitely an unusual occurrence,” he added.

50 degrees above normal in the North Pole this week, and 50 to 90 degrees above normal in Antarctica. Good lord. https://t.co/bSrodCJdei

— Brooke Jarvis (@brookejarvis) March 18, 2022

As Common Dreams has reportedthe Arctic has been warming three times faster than the world as a whole, accelerating polar ice melt, ocean warming, and other manifestations of the climate emergency.

“Looking back over the last few decades, we can clearly see a trend in warming, particularly in the ‘cold season’ in the Arctic,” Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute, told the Post. “It’s not surprising that warm air is busting through into the Arctic this year. In general, we expect to see more and more of these events in the future.”