Originally published 2022-04-06.
In mid-March 2022 both ends of the planet were hit by extraordinary warmth at the same time. On 18 March, Concordia research station on the East Antarctic plateau recorded about −12°C, roughly 38.5°C above its normal March level and possibly the largest jump above normal ever measured at a weather station. In the same week, a surge of mild air pushed deep into the Arctic, where parts of the region were reported to be around 30°C warmer than usual. It was still below freezing at Concordia, and scientists cautioned that two simultaneous heat waves can be a coincidence, but the event became a vivid example of how fast the poles are changing.
What happened in Antarctica
March is early autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. The Sun is sinking towards the long polar night and temperatures on the high ice plateau normally fall fast, often below −50°C. That made the readings from 18 March all the more striking.
- Concordia, the French–Italian station at Dome C, more than 3,200 metres above sea level, reached its highest temperature for any month on record. The daytime high was about −11.5°C, close to 40°C above the March average.
- Vostok, the Russian station near the coldest spot on Earth, provisionally reached −17.7°C, about 15°C above its previous March record of −32.6°C.
- Casey, an Australian base on the coast, rose from −1.9°C on 14 March to a March record of 5.6°C two days later. Rain fell on parts of the coast, which is unusual so late in the season.
Earlier write-ups of this event said Antarctic temperatures were “47°C higher than normal”. That figure appeared in some headlines but not in the measurements reported by the scientists involved. The best-documented anomaly is the one at Concordia, around 38.5°C to 40°C, and it applies to that one station, not to the whole continent.
Why it happened: blocking high and an atmospheric river
Meteorologists traced the Antarctic spike to an unusual weather pattern. A strong, slow-moving high-pressure system southeast of Australia sat next to a deep low over the East Antarctic interior. Between them, a narrow band of warm, moist air from the mid-latitudes, known as an atmospheric river, was steered far inland over the ice sheet.
Once that moist air arrived, thick cloud acted like a blanket. On a clear polar night, heat escapes quickly from the surface into space; under cloud, much of it is trapped. That combination of imported warmth and trapped heat explains how a place that is normally one of the coldest on Earth could warm so dramatically in a few days.
A detailed study published in the Journal of Climate in 2024 found that the event, which ran from about 15 to 19 March, brought anomalies of 30°C to 40°C across a wide area of East Antarctica. Surprisingly, the ice sheet as a whole gained mass: the heavy snowfall delivered by the moist air outweighed the melting and rain near the coast. The same weather system did leave a mark, though. A cyclone on its western flank likely helped trigger the final collapse of the Conger Ice Shelf, a small, already unstable shelf on the East Antarctic coast, and pushed sea ice extent even further below its already record low.
What happened in the Arctic
At the other end of the globe, a rapidly intensifying “bomb cyclone” formed off the north-east coast of the United States. Where it met a high-pressure system, another atmospheric river funnelled warm air northwards across the Atlantic and into the Arctic Circle.
Temperatures near the North Pole climbed close to or above freezing, which is unusual for mid-March, and the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard set a new March maximum of 3.9°C. Reports at the time described Arctic anomalies of around 30°C above normal at the warmest points.
Arctic warmth in late winter matters because sea ice is near its yearly peak. A thinner or patchier ice pack in spring affects polar bears, which hunt seals from the ice, and Indigenous communities that rely on sea ice for travel and subsistence hunting.
Anomaly is not the same as temperature
A common misunderstanding is that “40°C above normal” means it was 40°C at the station. It was not. An anomaly measures the difference from a long-term average for that place and time of year. At Concordia, the average for March is so low that a 38.5°C anomaly still left the thermometer well below zero.
Anomalies are useful because they show how unusual a day is, but they should always be read with the station, date and reference period alongside. A single extreme reading at one site is not the temperature of a whole polar region, and a short heat wave is weather, while climate describes averages over decades.
Was it climate change?
Scientists were careful here. Antarctica’s weather records are short and sparse; satellite records only go back to the early 1980s, and the continent naturally swings between extremes. Researchers writing at the time said it was too early to attribute this particular event to global warming, and that the two polar heat waves happening together may have been chance.
What is well established is the broader trend. The Arctic has warmed several times faster than the global average over recent decades, and polar heat waves are becoming more frequent and intense. Events like March 2022 give scientists a natural experiment: they show how the ice sheet responds when unusual warmth and moisture reach places that rarely see either.
The heat waves also coincided with a major climate report. On 4 April 2022 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its Working Group III report on cutting emissions. Co-chair Jim Skea said: “It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C.” The report said that keeping warming to around 2°C would still need global emissions to peak before 2025 and fall by about a quarter by 2030.
What the IPCC said can be done
The report was not only a warning. It laid out practical routes to lower emissions across every sector, including:
- Using less energy, for example through compact, walkable cities and efficient buildings. Buildings alone produced about a fifth of global emissions in 2019, and most of that could be cut.
- Electrifying transport and pairing it with low-emission power such as wind and solar.
- Protecting and restoring nature, so that forests, soils and wetlands store more carbon.
- Changing demand: shifts in diet, travel and consumption could reduce emissions by 40–70% by 2050 compared with earlier pledges.
For readers, the takeaway from March 2022 is twofold. First, single headlines about polar records need context: the place, the date and the difference between an anomaly and an actual temperature. Second, the long-term warming of the poles is real and measurable, and the IPCC’s message was that the tools to slow it already exist.
Sources: ScienceAlert / The Conversation: Record-smashing heatwaves are hitting Antarctica and the Arctic at the same time; Bloomberg: Antarctica heat wave brings enormous temperature jump; UN News: IPCC report, “now or never” to limit warming to 1.5°C; Wikipedia: IPCC Sixth Assessment Report; The Extraordinary March 2022 East Antarctica “Heat” Wave, Part II: impacts on the Antarctic ice sheet.
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