Siberia sizzles as climate change hits temperatures

Temperatures soared 10 degrees Celsius above average in June across much of permafrost-laden Siberia, with last month in a dead heat for the warmest June on record globally, the European Union’s climate monitoring network said on Tuesday.

An Arctic hourly temperature record for the month — 37 degrees Celsius — was set on June 21 near Verkhoyansk in northeastern Russia, where a weather station logged a blistering 38 degrees Celsius on the same day, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported.

The hourly record — averaged across 60 minutes — was 1 to 2 degrees above previously registered Arctic highs in 1969 and 1973.

Freakishly warm weather across large swathes of Siberia since January, combined with low soil moisture, have contributed to a resurgence of wildfires that devastated the region last summer, C3S reported.

Both the number and intensity of fires in Siberia and parts of Alaska have increased since mid-June, resulting in the highest carbon emissions for the month — 59 million tons of CO2 — since records began in 2003.

“Last year was already by far an unusual, and record, summer for fires in the Arctic Circle,” said Mark Parrington, senior scientist at the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, warning of “intense activity” in the coming weeks.

Copernicus has said that “zombie” blazes that smouldered through the winter may have reignited.

Globally, June 2020 was more than half a degree Celsius warmer than the 1981-2010 average for the same month, and on a par with June 2019 as the warmest ever registered.

Siberia and the Arctic Circle are prone to large year-on-year temperature fluctuations, but the persistence of this year’s warm spell is unusual, said C3S director Carlo Buontempo.