It hit 100° F in the Arctic Circle this weekend

Ice breaks up in the Arctic Circle.
(Image credit: MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

One of the coldest places on Earth just hit a dangerously high new record.

The Siberian town of Verkhoyansk hit 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit on Saturday, the hottest temperature ever recorded inside the Arctic Circle. That's more than 30 degrees hotter than the small town's average June high of 68 degrees, and just another indicator of how northern climates are rapidly getting hotter.

It's not unusual for the Arctic Circle to experience odd weather patterns and heat waves, but meteorologists have been especially worried about the Arctic Circle's warming temperatures this year, BBC News notes. March, April, and May's average temperatures have been far higher than usual, for far longer than usual.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
See more

Patterns, not just one-off high temperatures, help tie this extreme heat to climate change. While most of the Earth has warmed by an average of 1.44 degrees over the past 40 years, it's been more like 3.5 degrees in the Arctic Circle, Forbes reports. And that just deepens the problem — snow and ice that typically reflects sunlight melts to dark land and rock that draws it in, leading colder climates to warm far faster than warmer ones.

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Kathryn Krawczyk

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.