Temperatures in Siberia climbed to 100 degrees Fahrenheit over the weekend.
If that data is accurate, it is the hottest temperature on record so far — anywhere in the Arctic.
Typically one of the coldest places on Earth, Siberia has been facing unusually warmer weather so far this year. And now, a Russian heat wave has potentially smashed an all-time record high in Verkhoyansk.
Verkhoyansk, a town in northeast Russia that sits about 260 miles south of the Arctic coast and about six miles north of the Arctic Circle, saw a high temperature of 38 degrees Celsius, or 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, on Saturday.
If that reading is correct, it would shatter the town’s all-time record of 99.1 degrees Fahrenheit. The previous record was set on July 25, 1988. The temperature records for Verkhoyansk date back to 1885.
On top of that, this record would also be the hottest temperature ever recorded north of the Arctic Circle.
On average, the high for Verkhoyansk in late June usually doesn’t break past the upper 60s. But it might be time to start breaking out the sport deodorant, because Saturday’s record-breaking temperature was a whopping 40+ degrees higher than normal.
Amid the exceptionally high heat, children swam in a lake near Verkhoyansk on Sunday. Go back to winter, and that lake is solid ice.
Expansive blocking high pressure over Siberia was responsible for this heat wave, which has been in place since June 12. This blocking high hasn’t allowed colder air to push south from Russia’s Arctic coast.
This is part of a prolonged period of unusually warm weather for the region — with record-breaking winter and spring temperatures. In fact, Russia smashed its previous warmest January-May period by nearly 36 degrees Fahrenheit.
Russia has seen the planet’s most expansive and extreme warm anomalies in 2020 so far.
“It is undoubtedly an alarming sign,” said Freja Vamborg, Senior Scientist at the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which is affiliated with the European Commission. “The whole of winter and spring had repeated periods of higher-than-average surface air temperatures.”
Climate change scientists warn that this is an alarming sign that illustrates the most notable effects of global climate change.
Many agree that the Arctic region is warming about twice as quickly as the rest of the planet, as a consequence of global warming.
It should come as no surprise that Arctic sea ice coverage along the coast of Siberia is at a 41-year record low for this time of year. The warmer weather also led to an exceptionally early ice thawing on Siberia’s major rivers.
But what is surprising is these temperatures appear to be happening decades ahead of climate change projections.
