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While the media focuses on a two-day heatwave in Europe and a rather run-of-the-mill wildfire season –heat that was pulled anomalously far north by a low solar activity-induced ‘meridional‘ jet stream flow– unbeknownst to them, or at least unreported by them, is the fact that the entire Southern Hemisphere has been holding COLDER than the 1979-2000 average for some time now–according to the data provided by the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine.
Beginning in Antarctica –and as regular readers of Electroverse will well know, but it bears repeating– the continent as a whole has been unusually COLD over the past 18+ months, with the freeze only appearing to intensify.
The first -80C (-112F) of 2022, globally, was registered on July 8 at the French-Italian Antarctic base ‘Concordia’ — the first sub -80C since 2019.
More tellingly though, between April and September 2021 the South Pole averaged -61.1C (-78F), which made for its coldest six month spell ever, comfortably besting its previous chilliest ‘coreless winter‘ on record — the -60.6C (-77F) set back in 1976 (solar minimum of weak cycle 20).
The cold has persisted into 2022, too — the month of April at the South Pole Station finished approximately -2C below the multidecadal norm; while an anomaly of -3C was noted at the infamous Vostok station against the 1958-2021 mean.
The chill extended into May, June and is now gripping July, too, with fierce anomaly routinely registered ACROSS the continent.
Antarctica’s unmistakable cooling over the past 18-or-so months is also indicative of longer trend.
Official data reveals that East Antarctica, which covers two thirds of the continent, has cooled 2.8C over the past 40-or-so years, with West Antarctica cooling 1.6C. It stands that only a tiny slither of Antarctica (the Antarctic Peninsula) has seen any warming –statistically insignificant warming, at that– but there are no prizes for guessing which region the MSM focuses on.
A frigid Antarctica is, as you would expect, impacting other Southern Hemisphere land masses — its colder-than-average air is being transported northwards via the jet stream, unusually-far north, in fact, thanks to that ‘meridional‘ jet stream flow.
Australia and South America –the hemisphere’s largest land masses– have noted record-breaking cold conditions in recent weeks and months.
Australia is actually on for its coldest winter on record, after experiencing its snowiest start in recorded history.
The month of June was an exceptionally cold one, according to data provided by the country’s Bureau of Meteorology; and July is continuing in that same vein and is seeing the slaying of a myriad of all-time cold records.
South America Snow Extent at All-Time Highs
Moving onto South America, the continent has been suffering a similar fate to Australia in recent months, particularly Argentina, which been under the influence of a seemingly unending string of Antarctic fronts.
Argentina’s entire Autumn season (March-April-May) was the nation’s coldest since 1976 (solar minimum of weak cycle 20).
According to the president of the Union of Autonomous Transporters of Goods, Pedro Paulo da Rosa Dutra: “There must be 300 trucks on the border who are paralyzed within the problem itself, at the place of the blizzard. And outside, there must be about 500 more. All from Brazil,” added Dutra, who went on to note that many of the truckers were housed in nearby barracks.
Snowfall across the entire continent is also proving historic.
According to the GMASI Snow Tracker, South America’s snow/ice extent recently surpassed the all-time high set in 2017.
