By Anya Rothman-Cimino, age 10
Both the northern and southern poles experienced unprecedented heat waves over the same weekend in March. “This Antarctic heat wave definitely changes what we thought was possible for Antarctic weather,” Dr. Jonathan Wille, a postdoctoral researcher in polar meteorology at Université Grenoble Alpes in France, tweeted following the freak event.
Both poles saw temperature hikes of up to 70 degrees F. While this could have been a random weather event, many scientists have suggested that it is a worrying sign of things to come as global warming worsens.
“Climate change is loading the dice for these types of warmer and more moisture events to occur,” said Dr. Zachary Labe, a researcher in atmospheric sciences, to Vice. “Certainly, it aligns with the idea that climate change would make more of these warmer and wetter events likely to occur in the future.”
When temperatures rise, sea levels do, too. When the sea levels rise, land, inch by inch, starts to disappear into the sea. Venice, Italy, could be totally submerged by 2100!
