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“Alarm Bells” about climate change were sounded once more as the United Nations officially recognized Tuesday’s 38° Celsius (100.4° Fahrenheit) measurement in Siberia last summer as a new Arctic record.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the scorching heat was witnessed in Verkhoyansk on June 20, 2020. It marked the highest temperature recorded above the Arctic Circle.
This is the first record-breaking Arctic heat that the WMO has recorded, and it comes amid unprecedented global record temperatures, according to the U.N. agency.
“This Arctic record is part of a series of observations that have been reported to the WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes and that sound alarm bells about climate change,” Petteri Taalas, chief of the WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes stated in a statement.
Verkhoyansk, located approximately 115 kilometers (70 mi) north of Arctic Circle, has been measuring temperatures since 1885.
The agency stated that the temperature was “more fitting for the Mediterranean than the Arctic” and was measured at a meteorological station in Siberia during an extremely long Siberian heat wave.
Arctic Siberia’s average temperatures reached 10 degrees Celsius above the normal for most of the summer 2013, it stated, adding that this had fueled fires and massive sea-ice losses.
The heat wave played a significant part in 2020 being named one of the three hottest years on record worldwide.
Last year also saw a new record high of 18.3 degrees Celsius for the Antarctic continent, Taalas said.
The WMO is still trying to confirm the 54.4 degrees Celsius recorded in 2020 and 2021 at Death Valley, California, the world’s hottest spot.
Its experts are also working to validate a new European temperature record of 48.8° Celsius, which was set on the Italian island Sicily in the summer.
Taalas stated that the archive of the WMO “has never had as many simultaneous investigations,”
New category
The archive records the highest and lowest temperatures, rainfall, longest dry periods, maximum gusts of wind, longest lightning flash, and weather-related mortalities.
The dramatic changes that have taken place in the Arctic were recognized by the addition of Arctic heat records.
Although all parts of the planet are warming, some areas are heating faster than others – and the Arctic’s pace of change is more than twice the global average.
Randall Cerveny, an agency weather expert, stated that this investigation “highlights the increasing temperatures in a climatically significant region of the world.”
The WMO has added temperature extremes to the new category, so both polar areas are now represented in the new category. Antarctic region2007
The experts didn’t provide any previous records for the area because this was a new category in the archive. However, they said that they had determined that there had never been any temperatures above 38 degrees Celsius.
