Por la ola de calor, una isla de la Antártida se derrite

En las imágenes compartidas por el Observatorio de la Tierra de la NASA, se pueden observar que alrededor del 20% de la nieve en la capa de hielo de la Isla Águila se derritió durante la ola de calor.

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Antarctica's Eagle Island Melts Under Recent Warm Spell ❄️☀️ On February 6, 2020, weather stations recorded the hottest temperature on record for Antarctica. Thermometers at the Esperanza Base on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula reached 18.3°C (64.9°F)—around the same temperature as Los Angeles that day. The warm spell caused widespread melting on nearby glaciers. 🏔️ The warm temperatures arrived on February 5 and continued until February 13, 2020. The images above show melting on the ice cap of Eagle Island and were acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 on February 4 and February 13, 2020. 🛰️ The heat is apparent on the map (second image), which shows temperatures across the Antarctic Peninsula on February 9, 2020. The map was derived from the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model, and represents air temperatures at 2 meters (about 6.5 feet) above the ground. The darkest red areas are where the model shows temperatures surpassing 10°C (50°F). 🌡️ Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College observed that during the warming event, around 1.5 square kilometers (0.9 square miles) of snowpack became saturated with meltwater (shown in blue above). According to climate models, Eagle Island experienced peak melt—30 millimeters (1 inch)—on February 6. In total, snowpack on Eagle Island melted 106 millimeters (4 inches) from February 6- February 11. 📏 “I haven’t seen melt ponds develop this quickly in Antarctica,” said Pelto. “You see these kinds of melt events in Alaska and Greenland, but not usually in Antarctica.” He also used satellite images to detect widespread surface melting nearby on Boydell Glacier. 🌏 This February heatwave was the third major melt event of the 2019-2020 summer, following warm spells in November 2019 and January 2020. “If you think about this one event in February, it isn’t that significant,” said Pelto. “It’s more significant that these events are coming more frequently.“ 🖇️ Read more (link in bio): go.nasa.gov/3ca9mTZ

A post shared by NASA Earth Observatory (@nasaearth) on Feb 25, 2020 at 10:23am PST

La isla Águila queda en el extremo norte de la península Antártica y el 6 de febrero pasado, la base Esperanza que está ubicada allí llegó a una temperatura de 18,3 °C, rompiendo récords como la temperatura más alta jamás registrada en el continente.

Según lo explicado por la NASA, la ola de calor en el área, duró en realidad entre el 5 y el 13 de febrero. En ese período, 10 centímetros de nieve se derritieron en la isla Águila.

“Nunca había visto que estanques de deshielo se desarrollaran tan rápidamente en la Antártida. Ves este tipo de eventos de derretimiento en Alaska y Groenlandia, pero usualmente no en la Antártida”, dijo a la NASA Mauri Pelto, glaciólogo del Nichols College.

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