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SAO PAULO: Scientists in Antarctica have recorded a new record temperature of 20.75 degrees Celsius, breaking the barrier of 20 degrees for the first time on the continent, a researcher said on Thursday.

“We’d never seen a temperature this high in Antarctica,” Brazilian scientist Carlos Schaefer told the news reports.

He cautioned that the reading, taken at a monitoring station on an island off the continent’s northern tip on February 9, “has no meaning in terms of a climate-change trend,” because it is a one-off temperature and not part of a long-term data set.

But news that the icy continent is now recording temperatures in the relatively balmy 20s is likely to further fuel fears about the warming of the planet.

The reading was taken at Seymour

Island, part of a chain off the peninsula that curves out from the northern tip of Antarctica. The island is home to Argentina’s Marambio research base.

Schaefer, a soil scientist, said the reading was taken as part of a 20-year-old research project on the impact of climate change on the region’s permafrost. The previous high was in the 19s, he said.

“We can’t use this to anticipate climatic changes in the future. It’s a data point,” he said. “It’s simply a signal that something different is happening in that area.” Still, he added, a temperature that high had never been registered in Antarctica.

Accelerating melt-off from glaciers and especially ice sheets in Antarctica is helping drive sea level rises, threatening coastal megacities and small island nations. The previous record stood at 17.5 degrees on March 24, 2015, it said.