Just days after the earth saw its warmest January on record, Antarctica has broken its warmest temperature ever recorded. A reading of 65 degrees was taken at Esperanza Base along Antarctica’s Trinity Peninsula on Thursday, making it the ordinarily frigid continent’s highest measured temperature in history.

The Argentine research base is on the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula. Randy Cerveny, who tracks extremes for the World Meteorological Organization, calls Thursday’s reading a “likely record,” although the mark will still have to be officially reviewed and certified.

The balmy reading beats out the previous record of 63.5 degrees, which occurred on March 24, 2015.

The Antarctic peninsula, on which Thursday’s anomaly was recorded, is one of the fastest-warming regions in the world. In just the past 50 years, temperatures have surged a staggering 5 degrees in response to earth’s swiftly-warming climate. Around 87 percent of glaciers along the peninsula’s west coast have retreated in that time, the majority doing so at an accelerated pace since 2008.

The WMO notes that cracks in the Pine Island Glacier “have been growing rapidly” in the past several days according to satellite imagery.

A 2016 photo of Esperanza Base. (Andrew Shiva)

The recent spate of warmth owes to a ridge of high pressure that has lingered over the region for several days. High-pressure systems feature sinking air, which favors milder temperatures.

This effect was amplified on a local level due to a “foehn” wind, characterized by air sweeping down a mountain that begins compressing as air pressures rise near the earth’s surface. That causes additional warming.

Moreover, a look at simulated atmospheric profiles around the time it hit the record indicated warmer air aloft than at the surface — meaning any air that mixed down to ground level could have had an additional leg up in warming.

It’s been a monumental year for climate extremes, and we’re only on day 38 of 2020. January was the warmest on record globally according to atmospheric monitoring group Copernicus, with records shattered in Europe and Asia. A number of locales in Eastern Europe and particularly Russia wound up more than 12-13 degrees above average.