It's official: Arctic Siberia reached 100.4 degrees last year – the hottest on record
Doyle Rice- The World Meteorological Organization called it the latest in a string of “alarm bells about our changing climate.”
- The Arctic is among the fastest warming regions in the world and is heating up at more than twice the global average.
- Global weather records can take months, if not years, to certify.
An all-time Arctic high temperature of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, a record set in the northern Russian town of Verkhoyansk in 2020, was certified as accurate by the United Nations' weather agency on Tuesday.
The World Meteorological Organization called it the latest in a string of “alarm bells about our changing climate.”
The organization also said the temperature was “more befitting the Mediterranean than the Arctic” and was set on June 20, 2020, during a heat wave that swept across Siberia and stretched north of the Arctic Circle.
Global weather records can take months, if not years, to certify.
Average temperatures over Arctic Siberia reached as high as 18 degrees above normal for much of the summer last year, fueling devastating fires, driving massive sea ice loss and playing a major role in 2020 being one of the three warmest years on record.
“This new Arctic record is one of a series of observations reported to the WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes that sound the alarm bells about our changing climate,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a statement.
The Arctic will soon see more rain than snow.Scientists say it may speed up global warming.
The Arctic is among the fastest warming regions in the world and is heating up at more than twice the global average, the WMO said.
Verkhoyansk is about 70 miles north of the Arctic Circle and a meteorological station there has been observing temperatures since 1885, the WMO said.
Spokeswoman Clare Nullis said the record reading was the first of its kind in a new category of Arctic temperature monitoring, so there was no previous record to compare it with. But such a high temperature has never been seen before in the Arctic, she said.
Taalas added that “WMO investigators are currently seeking to verify temperature readings of 129.9 degrees recorded in both 2020 and 2021 in the world’s hottest place, Death Valley in California, and to validate a new reported European temperature record of 119.8 degrees in the Italian island of Sicily this summer. The WMO has never had so many ongoing simultaneous investigations."
Contributing: The Associated Press
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