Highest-ever temperature recorded in Norwegian Arctic archipelago

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A handout photo made available on July 17, 2020 by Polar Bears International shows a polar bear in Svalbard, Norway, in 2018. – Climate change is starving polar bears into extinction, according to research published on July 20, 2020 that predicts the apex carnivores could all but disappear within the span of a human lifetime. In some regions they are already caught in a vicious downward spiral, with shrinking sea ice cutting short the time bears have for hunting seals, while dwindling body weight undermines their chances of surviving Arctic winters without food, scientists reported in Nature Climate Change. The study calculates “timelines of risk” for different polar bear demographics, exploring two alternative futures with different levels of greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric concentrations of CO2. If business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions continue, it’s likely that all but a few polar bear populations will collapse by 2100. (Photo by BJ KIRSCHHOFFER / POLAR BEARS INTERNATIONAL / AFP) 

OSLO, Norway (AFP) — Norway’s Arctic archipelago Svalbard on Saturday recorded its highest-ever temperature, the country’s meteorological institute reported.

According to scientific study, global warming in the Arctic is happening twice as fast as for the rest of the planet.

For the second day in a row, the archipelago registered 21.2 degrees Celsius (70.2 Fahrenheit) in the afternoon, just under the 21.3 degrees recorded in 1979, meteorologist Kristen Gislefoss told AFP.

Later in the afternoon however, at around 6:00 pm local time, it recorded 21.7 degrees, setting a new all-time record.

The island group, dominated by Spitzbergen the only inhabited isle in the northern Norway archipelago, sits 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the North Pole.

The relative heatwave, expected to last until Monday, is a huge spike of normal temperatures in July, the hottest month in the Arctic,

The Svalbard islands would normally expect to be seeing temperatures of 5-8 degrees Celsius at this time of year.

The region has seen temperatures five degrees above normal since January, peaking at 38 degrees in Siberia in mid-July, just beyond the Arctic Circle.

According to a recent report “The Svalbard climate in 2100,” the average temperatures for the archipelago between 2070 and 2100 will rise by 7-10 degrees, due to the levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

Changes are already visible. From 1971 to 2017 between three and five degrees of warming have been observed, with the biggest rises in the winter, according to the report.

(FILES) This file photo taken on October 31, 2018 shows polar bears feeding at a garbage dump near the village of Belushya Guba, on the remote Russian northern Novaya Zemlya archipelago, a tightly-controlled military area where a village declared a state of emergency in February after dozens of bears were seen entering homes and public buildings. – Climate change is starving polar bears into extinction, according to research published on July 20, 2020 that predicts the apex carnivores could all but disappear within the span of a human lifetime. In some regions they are already caught in a vicious downward spiral, with shrinking sea ice cutting short the time bears have for hunting seals, while dwindling body weight undermines their chances of surviving Arctic winters without food, scientists reported in Nature Climate Change. The study calculates “timelines of risk” for different polar bear demographics, exploring two alternative futures with different levels of greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric concentrations of CO2. If business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions continue, it’s likely that all but a few polar bear populations will collapse by 2100. (Photo by Alexander GRIR / AFP) 

Svalbard, known for its polar bear population, houses both a coal mine, digging out the most global warming of all energy sources, and a “doomsday’ seed vault which has since 2008 collected stocks of the world’s agricultural bounty in case of global catastrophe

The vault required 20 million euros ($23.3 million) worth of work after the infiltration of water due to thawing permafrost in 2016.


© Agence France-Presse