INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Antarctica has experienced its highest temperature on record, with a research station provisionally recording 18.3C (64.9F).The reading
beats the previous record on the Earth's southernmost continent of 17.5C (63.5F) in March 2015 by 0.8C, according to the Argentine station
Esperanza, which collected the data.The tweet reporting the news from Argentina's meteorological association was shared by the United
Nations' World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).Professor James Renwick, a climate scientist at Victoria University of Wellington, told the
Guardian Australia the WMO committee would likely reconvene to ratify the new record.He said: "The reading is impressive as it's only five
years since the previous record was set and this is almost one degree centigrade higher
It's a sign of the warming that has been happening there that's much faster than the global average."To have a new record set that
quickly is surprising but who knows how long that will last? Possibly not that long at all."Some 87% of the glaciers along its west coast
have "retreated" over those five decades and have shown an "accelerated retreat" in the past 12 years, it added.Esperanza, located near the
northern tip of the Peninsula, has been collecting data since 1961.Scientists brave the cold to study the threat to AntarcticaThe reading
breaks the 2015 record for the Antarctic continent, defined as the main continental landmass and adjoining islands by the WMO.The record for
the Antarctic region - defined as all land and ice south of 60 degrees latitude - is 19.8C (67.64F) recorded on Signy Island in January
1982, the WMO said.The Antarctic Peninsula, the northwest tip near South America, is among the fastest warming regions on earth, with
temperatures rising by almost 3C over the past 50 years, the WMO said.
