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38C/100F, a record Arctic temperature confirmed, others likely to follow: WMO

A new and disturbing high temperature record for the Arctic of 38C/100F was confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Tuesday.

Worryingly, the temperature reading in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk taken last June is "just one of a series” of potentially record-breaking observations from around the planet in 2020 that the agency is seeking to verify, spokesperson Clare Nullis told journalists in Geneva.

“The World Meteorological Organization has this morning recognized a temperature of 38 degrees Celsius which is a staggering 100.4 Fahrenheit in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk. It was recorded last year, so 20 June 2020 and we have recognized it as a new Arctic record.”

Describing the record as a temperature “more befitting the Mediterranean than the Arctic”, WMO explained in a statement that average temperatures over Arctic Siberia reached 10C above normal for much of last summer.

It noted that the Siberian town is 115 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle.

“If you cast your mind back to last year, you will recall there was an exceptional, prolonged Siberian heatwave, as a result of this heatwave we saw devastating and very widespread Siberian fires and we saw massive Arctic sea ice loss at the end of the summer season,” Ms. Nullis said.

The furnace-like conditions also contributed to 2020 becoming one of the three warmest years on record, the WMO spokesperson explained, adding that the Siberian heatwave “would have been almost impossible without climate change” – and that a new category for record temperatures in the Arctic had to be created as a result of the Verhoyansk reading and ongoing climate change.

In WMO’s Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes, the category is listed as “highest recorded temperature at or north of 66.5⁰, the Arctic Circle”.

Although WMO’s Nullis warned that the Arctic is “one of the fastest warming parts of the world; it’s warming more than twice as fast as the global average”, she added that climate change has forced up temperatures elsewhere, which the UN agency is busy verifying.

“Last year also there was a new temperature record in the Antarctic continent of 18.3 degrees Celsius that was recorded at an Argentinian base called Esperanza,” she said.

WMO investigators are seeking to verify temperature readings of 54.4C recorded in both 2020 and 2021 in the world’s hottest place, Death Valley in California.

In addition, they are also assessing a new reported European temperature record of 48.8C in the Italian island of Sicily this summer.

“The WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes has never had so many ongoing simultaneous investigations,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas, in a statement.

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WMO - Arctic Heat Temperature Record

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