South Pole's Very Cold June; Western Cold Breaks More Records; July USA; The Thermometers Changed; + X-Flare, Full-Halo CME

The public is handed a decimal-point global temperature figure & told it represents the planet. But underneath it sits a changing thermometer network increasingly drawn from warmer physical settings.

South Pole‘s Very Cold June

Antarctica has been anomalously cold for weeks.

As expected, the June average reflects this.

The provisional monthly average at Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station came in at -60.2C (-76.4F), some 2.1C below the June norm and the station’s coldest June since 2021. It was also the coldest month at the Pole since July 2022.

June 2021 formed part of the coldest April–September stretch ever recorded at the South Pole Station (data back to 1957) — the dark-season “coreless winter” when the sun stays set.

For reference, the South Pole’s coldest June on record remains the -64.3C from 2003. But this -60.2C is still well below normal, biting cold even by South Pole standards, and comes after consistence cold pulses, including a June 16 low of -73.6C (-100.5F).

While headlines chased a sliver of warmth along the Antarctic Peninsula earlier in the month, the South Pole was telling the continent’s true story. Vostok and Concordia monthly updates to follow—also set to be anomalously cold.

Western Cold Breaks More Records

That western cold kept biting into the final hours of June.