The UN on Tuesday officially recognised the 38 degrees Celsius measured in Siberia last year as a new record high for the Arctic, sounding \u201calarm bells\u201d over climate change.<\/p>\n
The sweltering heat \u2014 equivalent to 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit \u2014 was seen on June 20, 2020, in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk, marking the highest temperature ever recorded above the Arctic Circle, the World Meteorological Organization said.<\/p>\n
This is the first time the WMO has added record heat in the Arctic to its archive of extreme weather reports, and it comes amid an unprecedented wave of record temperature spikes globally, the UN agency said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis 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,\u201d its chief Petteri Taalas said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Verkhoyansk lies about 115 kilometres (70 miles) north of the Arctic Circle and temperatures have been measured there since 1885.<\/p>\n
The temperature, which the agency pointed out was \u201cmore befitting the Mediterranean than the Arctic\u201d, was measured at a meteorological station during an exceptionally prolonged Siberian heatwave.<\/p>\n
The average temperatures across Arctic Siberia reached up to 10C above normal for much of the summer last year, it said, adding that this had fuelled fires and massive sea-ice loss.<\/p>\n
The heatwave also played a significant role in 2020 being designated one of the three warmest years on record globally.<\/p>\n
Last year also saw a new record high of 18.3C for the Antarctic continent, Taalas said.<\/p>\n
The WMO is still seeking to verify the 54.4C recorded in both 2020 and 2021 in the world\u2019s hottest place, Death Valley in California.<\/p>\n
And its experts are also working on validating a new European temperature record of 48.8C reported on the Italian island of Sicily this past summer.<\/p>\n
The WMO\u2019s archive \u201chas never had so many ongoing simultaneous investigations\u201d, Taalas said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The UN on Tuesday officially recognised the 38 degrees Celsius measured in Siberia last year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-picks","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n