Men repair their truck amid smoke from a forest fire on a road near Magaras, Sakha republic, Siberia, in July.
Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP via Getty Images
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Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP via Getty Images
Men repair their truck amid smoke from a forest fire on a road near Magaras, Sakha republic, Siberia, in July.
Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP via Getty Images
The United Nations has officially recognized the new record high temperature for the Arctic, confirming the reading 38 degrees C (100.4 Fahrenheit) taken in June 2020.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Tuesday released a statement calling the temperature measurement “more suitable for the Mediterranean than for the Arctic.”
The high index, taken on June 20, 2020, in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk, occurred during a prolonged heatwave in Siberia, during which the region reached 10 degrees Celsius above normal.
WMO Secretary-General GS Petteri Taalas said: “This new Arctic record is one of a series of observations reported to the WMO Extreme Weather and Climate Archive.
He added: “In 2020, there is also a new temperature record (18.3°C) for the continent of Antarctica.
The WMO said the Arctic “is among the fastest warming regions in the world” and the unprecedented temperatures have made it add a new climate category for “the highest temperature recorded at or to the north is 66.5⁰, Arctic Circle” to my archive.
High temperatures have “promoted terrible fires .” [and] It led to massive sea ice loss that “played a major role in 2020, being one of the three warmest years on record,” it said.
As NPR’s Rebecca Hersher reported last June 20,000 tons of diesel oil spilled in northern Siberia when storage tanks collapsed, possibly due to melting permafrost.
The WMO says the new record high in the Arctic is just one of many record highs in 2020 and 2021 that it is working to verify – including a reading of 54.4 C (129.9 F). in Death Valley, California, the hottest place in the world, and a new European record of 48.8 C (119.8 F) on the island of Sicily.
“The WMO Extreme Weather and Climate Archive has never had so many simultaneous investigations,” Taalas said.
