The World Meteorlogical Organization has confirmed a temperature of 38 degrees Celsius in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk on June 20, 2020 as a new Arctic temperature record.

The temperature, more befitting the Mediterranean than the Arctic, was measured at a meteorological observing station during an exceptional and prolonged Siberian heatwave. Average temperatures over Arctic Siberia reached as high as 10 °C above normal for much of summer last year. The WMO says that heat fueled devastating fires, caused massive sea ice loss and played a major role in 2020 being one of the three warmest years on record.

The WMO says there was also a new temperature record of 18.3°C for the Antarctic continent.

Professor Taalas says WMO investigators are currently seeking to verify temperature readings of 54.4°C recorded in both 2020 and 2021 in the world’s hottest place, Death Valley in California, and to validate a new reported European temperature record of 48.8°C in the Italian island of Sicily this summer.

The extreme temperature prompted a WMO panel of experts to add a new climate category ‘highest recorded temperature at or north of 66.5°, the Arctic Circle’ to its international Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes. The World Meteorlogical Organization says the Arctic is among the fastest warming regions in the world and is heating more than twice the global average.