The highest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic – 38C (100F) – has been officially confirmed.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Tuesday verified the record, reported in the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk on 20 June last year.
The temperature was 18C higher than the area’s average daily maximum for June.
The WMO, a UN agency, raised alarm bells over the confirmed news.
It said the extreme heat was “more befitting the Mediterranean than the Arctic”.
It is the first time the agency has included the Arctic Circle in its archive of extreme weather reports.
The WMO said the 38C temperature was measured at a meteorological station during “an exceptional and prolonged Siberian heatwave”.
Last month, an UN-appointed panel of experts said that the earth is getting so hot
that temperatures in about a decade will probably blow past the most ambitious threshold
set in the Paris accord.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the report as a “code red” for humanity.
He stressed that it “must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy the planet.”
Change Is Needed
Thus, world leaders and climate change agreed that something has to change to avoid the climate crisis.
However, the activist Greta Thunberg has expressed no surprise towards the IPCC report.
“It confirms what we already know from thousands of previous studies and reports that we
are in an emergency,” the 18-year-old wrote on Twitter.
“We can still avoid the worst consequences, but not if we continue like today, and not
without treating the crisis like a crisis,” she added.
