The Arctic archipelago of Svalbard — home to 3,000 humans , a few hundred polar bear , and a distich of " Doomsday hurdle " — has have its highest ever temperature over the weekend .
The 41 - year - old record was smash on Sunday , July 26 after temperatures in the town of Longyearbyen in Svalbard make 21.7 ° C ( 71.06 ° F ) in the afternoon , according to theNorwegian Meteorological Institute . It beats the previous phonograph record , set on July 16 , 1979 , by 0.4 ° deoxycytidine monophosphate .
incur on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard , Longyearbyen is the northernmost permanently inhabited town with over 1,000 people in the world . In mid - November , the area is plunk into pitch darkness and does n’t see sunlight again until tardy - January . While this Arctic small town is no alien to profound seasonal changes , the new record is still fairly remarkable;average summer highsare typicallyjust 3 to 7 ° snow ( 37 to 45 ° F ) while average wintertime " highs " are -11 to -13 ° C ( 12 to 9 ° farad ) .
The icy isone of the hardest - hitcorners of Earth when it fare to climate modification . late decades have consider a considerable rise in air and water temperatures , along with sea chicken feed loss and permafrost thawing . If current style continue , some fashion model sayit look likelywe’ll see ice - free summers in the Arctic before 2050 . Arctic thawing is especially worry as it creates a nasty feedback loop : As progressively more frosting thaw , less sunlight is reflected and more heat is soak up by the darker ocean airfoil and land . This creates a vicious cycle whereby the temperature increases , result in further ocean meth loss , and so on .
The wider ecosystem in Svalbard is already feeling the tan . Back in 2019 , ecologists notedat least 200 reindeerhad hunger to death , the most severe drop in the reindeer numbers since scientist start recording the population in 1978 . The hundreds of deaths were closely linked to milder winters causing dramatically heavier rainfall . In turn , more rain settles on the tundra stimulate the land to become frigid and hard for the Rangifer tarandus to eat on vegetation .
Svalbard is also of pastime as it ’s home to theGlobal Seed Vaultand theArctic World Archive , two “ Revelation of Saint John the Divine validation ” vaults that are used to safeguard important relics of human refinement , from plant seed to graphics , in the event of a natural or man - made disaster . Unfortunately , the Global Seed Vault has already beenthreatened with balmy floodingafter freakishly warm temperature and hard rains led to increased meltwater in the area .
But Longyearbyen is n’t the only part of the Arctic Circle wracking up record temperature . On June 20 , theSiberian town of Verkhoyanskreached 38 ° C ( 100.4 ° F ) , potentially the highest temperature on phonograph record in the Arctic .
