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The NASA study revealed that West Antarctica’s key glaciers are in an irreversible retreat
Image source: NASA

The temperature in Antarctica has exceeded 20C for the first time.

Researchers logged a temperature of 20.75C on Seymour Island off the coast of the continent.

Brazilian scientist Carlos Schaefer told AFP they had “never seen a temperature this high in Antarctica”.

However, the scientist warned the temperature, logged on February 9, was just one reading and not part of a long-term data set.

Antarctica also hit a record last week, with a temperature reading of 18.3C on the Antarctic Peninsula.

This latest reading was taken at a monitoring station on Seymour Island, part of a chain of islands off the same peninsula, at the northernmost point of the continent.

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Although the temperature is a record high, Carlos Schaefer emphasized that the reading was not part of a wider study and so, in itself, could not be used to predict a trend.

He said: “We can’t use this to anticipate climatic changes in the future. It’s a data point.

“It’s simply a signal that something different is happening in that area.”

According to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), temperatures on the Antarctic continent have risen by almost 3C over the past 50 years, and that about 87% of the glaciers along its west coast have “retreated” in that time.

Over the past 12 years the glaciers have shown an “accelerated retreat” due to global warming, it adds.

January 2020 was also Antarctica’s warmest January on record.

Scientists have warned that global warming is causing so much melting at the South Pole, it will eventually disintegrate – causing the global sea level to rise by at least 10ft over the coming centuries.

The previous record for the entire Antarctic region – which includes the continent, islands and ocean that are in the Antarctic climatic zone – was 19.8C, logged in January 1982.

In July 2019, the Arctic region hit its own record temperature of 21C, logged by a base at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.

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Pope Francis has issued an encyclical, calling for fossil fuels to be “progressively replaced without delay”.

The pontiff urges the richer world to make changes in lifestyle and energy consumption to avert the unprecedented destruction of the ecosystem.

Environmentalists hope the message will spur on nations ahead of the UN climate conference in Paris in December.

However, parts of the document, leaked earlier this week, have already been criticized by some US conservatives.

The document has been dismissed by two Republican presidential candidates.

The encyclical, named “Laudato Si (Be Praised), On the Care of Our Common Home”, aims to inspire everyone – not just Roman Catholics – to protect the Earth.

The 192-page letter, which is the highest level teaching document a pope can issue, lays much of the blame for global warming on human activities.Pope Francis climate change encyclical

Pope Francis writes that: “We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.

“The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life.”

The Pope criticizes what he calls a “collective selfishness”, but says that there is still time to stop the damage, calling for an end to consumerism and greed.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi launched the pontiff’s second encyclical at a news conference on June 18.

The release comes six months before international leaders gather in Paris to try to seal a deal to reduce carbon emissions.

It has been widely welcomed by environmental groups, with WWF president Yolanda Kakabadse saying it “adds a much-needed moral approach” to the debate on climate change.

Greenpeace leader Kumi Naidoo highlighted passages calling for policies that reduce carbon emissions, including by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy.

But a leak of the document, published by Italy’s L’Espresso magazine on June 16, got a frosty response from skeptical conservatives in America, including two Roman Catholic presidential candidates.

Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush said he did not get his economic policy from his bishops, cardinals or pope.

Meanwhile Rick Santorum questioned whether Pope Francis was credible on the issue of climate science.

However, many academics have welcomed the pontiff’s input.

The UN’s climate change chief Christiana Figueres says the Pope’s message will influence talks in Paris this year on a deal to tackle global warming.

Developing countries are demanding firmer promises of financial help from rich countries so they can adapt to inevitable changes in the climate and get clean energy to avoid contributing to further warming.

Christiana Figueres said their position would be strengthened by Pope Francis’ insistence that this was the clear moral responsibility of the rich.

The encyclical will be welcomed by poor countries in Africa and Latin America.

The big question is how it will play in the USA, where it has already been dismissed by a Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, who is a Catholic.

Leading Republicans have warned the UN that they will undo President Barack Obama’s climate policies – so if the encyclical sways any of the conservative Catholics in Congress that could prove significant.

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