In the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, summer temperatures are “inconceivable” – Libération

Heat records are being broken for the third consecutive summer in Norway, which is warming seven times faster than the rest of the planet. A situation that is expected to worsen climate instability on a global scale.

An extraordinary, almost unreal heat. This Wednesday, September 4, the UN meteorological agency is launching a “red alert” about the historic levels reached in August by the average global temperature over a large part of the planet. She points out in particular the soaring temperatures observed in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago located a thousand kilometers from the North Pole, which have left Arctic specialists stunned. On August 11, in Longyearbyen, a small coal mining town, the mercury reached 20.3°C. A threshold never before crossed at this time of year in the region, indicates Daan van den Broek, researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), in a note published on August 30 on his blog. “This last month has particularly stood out with an average temperature of 11°C, he wrote. A staggering level: it is 2.6°C above the previous record and almost 5°C above the climatological norm for the month of August. Usually, based on the reference period 1991-2020, the average is 6°C.

For the meteorologist, these extraordinary temperatures are a consequence of global warming and “abnormally persistent southerly winds, carrying extremely mild air from lower latitudes into the region,” he describes. It