Dramatic images show ice-less region of Antarctica following record-high temperatures.
The peninsula region experienced temperatures near 65 degrees Fahrenheit.
Video taken near in the Chilean Antarctic Territory, on the continent's peninsula, show mountain bases with mere patches of snow and sections of ocean topped with little to no ice.
On Thursday, the Esperanza Base, a year-round Argentine research center on the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula, recorded a temperature of 18.3 degrees Celsius -- nearly 65 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Argentina's national meteorological service.
The previous record was set in the same location in March 2015 at 17.5 degrees C, or 63.5 degrees F.
Such high temperatures used to occur every 1,000 years and then every 100 years, Ricardo Jana, glacier scientists for the Chilean Antarctic Institute, told Reuters.
"Now we're seeing them, I think, in the order of decades," Jana said. "I think that's a consequence of the global climate change."
The recent highs in the region have followed a string of heat waves since January, Marcelo Leppe, director of the Chilean Antarctic Institute, told Reuters.
The amount of ice lost annually from the Antarctic has increased six-fold from 1979 to 2017, the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations' authoritative voice on weather, climate and water, said in a statement last week.
Despite the spike in temperatures, snow has continued to fall in Fildes Bay, on an archipelago north of the peninsula between King George Island and Nelson Island, scientists said.
ABC News' Rashid Haddou contributed to this report.
12 February 2020
abc NEWS
