Large Antarctic Area Has Melted

from the New York Times:

While much of the world has warmed in a pattern that scientists have linked with near certainty to human activities, the frigid interior of Antarctica has resisted the trend.

NASA’s QuikScat satellite detected extensive areas of snowmelt, shown in yellow and red, in west Antarctica in January 2005.

Now, a new satellite analysis shows that at least once in the last several years, masses of unusually warm air pushed to within 310 miles of the South Pole and remained long enough to melt surface snow across a California-size expanse.

The warm spell, which occurred over one week in 2005, was detected by scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA and the University of Colorado, Boulder...

It is too soon to know whether the warm spell was a fluke or a portent.