When the Bell Tolled

By November 2020, just after the beginning of winter on the lunar calendar, strange weather had begun appearing frequently across the world.

Many places experienced rare heat waves, with temperatures several degrees higher than the average for the same period in previous years. It was so hot that people could barely tell whether it was summer or winter.

Some places even saw abnormal weather such as tornadoes, supercell thunderstorms, and hailstorms. All kinds of unseasonal, irregular, extreme weather appeared with increasing frequency. Fortunately, most of it occurred in sparsely populated regions.

But even densely populated areas on every continent saw all sorts of anomalies. For instance, prolonged heat and drought caused frequent fires.

Because last year's El Niño had brought a warm winter, many people had guessed that this year might see an anti-El Niño, a La Niña event, and one of the coldest winters in recent years.

Yet no one had expected this year to turn out even hotter than the last.

Of course, there were all kinds of explanations online, saying that the truly cold season had not arrived yet and that occasional high temperatures were perfectly normal.

However, as time passed and late November arrived, more and more bizarre weather phenomena emerged around the world. Densely populated cities also began coming under "attack." Some cities were even directly struck by widespread thunderstorms, damaging and disrupting large amounts of electronic equipment. What was more, none of these violent convective weather events had been forecast by meteorological departments. It was as though humanity's long-matured weather forecasting technology had suddenly failed across the board.

In truth, though, several major powers had obtained some special information through satellite remote sensing and knew that the source of the recent global climate anomalies lay in Antarctica.

Beginning in mid-October, temperatures in certain parts