Antarctica experienced a heatwave earlier this month, with temperatures nearly 65 degrees Fahrenheit across northern portions of the normally frigid continent.
There was a significant decrease in ice and snow on the island during that period. The warmth melted around 20% of the Antarctic island's snow in only nine days, as shown by newly released images from NASA.
"I haven't seen melt ponds develop this quickly in Antarctica," according to Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College in Massachusetts. "You see these kinds of melt events in Alaska and Greenland, but not usually in Antarctica."
The melting of the island's snow is an increasingly common symptom of the climate crisis.
Eagle Island is shown on the photo with the northeastern peninsula of the icy continent at the start and end of this month's Antarctic heatwave. The nine-day heat event caused much of the land beneath the island's ice cap to be exposed, and pools of meltwater to open up on its surface.
The Antarctic temperatures recently hit record highs twice in the space of one week. The heat wave melted around 20% of the snow of one of its islands.
According to the World Meteorological Organization, thermometers at the Esperanza Base on the northern tip of the Antarctica Peninsula marked a temperature of 64.9 degrees Fahrenheit on Feb. 6. It was the same temperature as Los Angeles that day.
On Feb. 6 to 11, snowpack on Eagle Island melted 4 inches, which was the peak of the heatwave. The rapid melting resulted from sustained high temperatures significantly above freezing.
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NASA said this persistent warmth was not typical in Antarctica until this century, but it has become more common in recent years.
The amount of meltwater that reached the ocean from the Antarctic peninsula was plotted by climate scientist Xavier Fettweis. The heatwave had the most contribution to sea level rise this summer.
Captured by NASA's Landsat-8 satellite on February 4 and February 13, images reveal the startling difference nine days of record-breaking temperatures can make on the planet's coldest continent. The image of a snow-covered island transformed into one with melt-pools and exposed rocky terrain has researchers concerned about the effects climate change is having on the region.
Climate models indicated that 25 miles from the Esperanza research base was Eagle Island which experienced peak melt, about 1 inch on the day of the reported heat record. This resulted in a loss of 4 inches in a little more than a week.
According to NASA, "About 20 percent of seasonal snow accumulation in the region melted in this one event on Eagle Island."
Glaciologist Mauri Pelto from the Nichols College observed that during the warming event, around 1.5 square kilometers (0.9 square miles) of snowpack became saturated with meltwater.
A combination of meteorological elements resulted in the warm temperatures of February 2020.
On Feb. 9, a reading of 69.3 degrees at Argentina's Esperanza Base was measured a few days later at a research station on Seymour Island, but that reading has not yet been officially verified.
