Yes, you read that right… The coldest location on the planet has experienced a heatwave in an event that’s smashed records and shocked scientists. Temperatures over the eastern Antarctic ice sheet soared way above the average last week, with parts of the icy continent hovering about 40C above normal for 3 days and counting. Temperatures have been hovering around -18C to -12C, which is warm by polar standards. “This event is completely unprecedented and upended our expectations about the Antarctic climate system,” said French meteorologist Jonathan Wille. He says the warm conditions were spurred by a narrow corridor of water vapour in the sky, which brought a big dump of rain and heat that has spread across the continent. This type of weather system has occurred before, but not to this extent or intensity. It’s difficult to attribute this one event to climate change, experts say, but it’s thought to be behind the broader conditions for such an event.