Norway’s archipelago records highest ever temperature

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

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

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

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

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 will rise by 7-10 degrees between 2070 and 2100, due to the levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

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.