Antarctica has extreme climatic variability, with great differences between the coasts and the interior of the continent, especially the frozen plateau on which the South Pole is located.

Most of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula have suffered from warming and thawing during the second half of the 20th century, the South Pole cooled until at least the 1980s, before the trend reversed, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change.

With an increase of 0.61ºC per decade, between 1989 and 2018, the temperature recorded at the Amundsen-Scott base in South Pole, increased three times faster than the world average.

The result surprised them: We believed that this part of Antarctica was on the fringes of warming, but we discovered that this is no longer the case, explained one of its authors, Kyle Clem, from Victoria University, Australia.

To explain this phenomenon, experts first point to warming in the tropical zone of the Western Pacific Ocean, which led to a drop in atmospheric pressure in the Weddell Sea and pushed hot air towards the South Pole.

Although it is not impossible that warming is due to natural causes, it is very unlikely, according to Clem, who explains that climate models attribute a 1°C increase to human-caused climate change, of the total + 1.8°C that recorded the South Pole in 30 years.

The [grim] message is that no place is safe from warming, said Sharon Stammerjohn and Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado.