ByAllison Chinchar, CNN Meteorologist

Updated 12:30 PM ET, Sat October 9, 2021

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/09/weather/weather-record-cold-antarctica-climate-change/index.html

(CNN)In a year of extreme heat, Antarctica’s last six months were the coldest on record.”For the polar darkness period, from April through September, the average temperature was -60.9 degrees Celsius (-77.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a record for those months,” the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said.The last six months is also the darkest period at the South Pole, which is where the name polar darkness (alsocalled polar night)comes from. Here, the sun sets for the last time around the spring equinox, and does not rise again until near the autumn equinox six months later.

For the entire Antarctic continent, the winter of 2021 was the second-coldest on record, with the “temperature for June, July, and August 3.4 degrees Celsius (6.1 degrees Fahrenheit) lower than the 1981 to 2010 average at -62.9 degrees…