Freezing cold stays out at the North Pole: 25 degrees warmer than normal | Science & Planet

“There is no snow now, but rain north of Spitsbergen,” says weatherman Wouter van Bernebeek. “They are dealing with more or less the same type of air at the North Pole as we were in last week. A powerful air current has drawn almost in a straight line from the south of Europe over Norway and the Arctic Ocean to overturn the weather about 6000 kilometers away.”

It often does not happen that a warm air stream travels such a long distance to the north. “Normally there is a hitch along the way that stops the flow,” says Van Bernebeek. “It hasn’t been there now.”

This phenomenon cannot be attributed to climate change, the weatherman adds. “We don’t see it often, but it used to happen sometimes. In the Arctic, the temperature can fluctuate by as much as 80 degrees, so these kinds of effects are noticeable.”

Still, Van Bernebeek is concerned about the current polar temperature. “The fact that the temperature fluctuates may have nothing to do with global warming, but the fact that the temperature is now above freezing is worrying.” He explains that it is generally getting warmer in the Arctic, and that where the winter temperature used to be barely above -10, the temperature can now suddenly rise above freezing. “So those few degrees suddenly make a lot of difference.”

Van Bernebeek wants to nuance the high temperatures. “Of course it is not equally warm everywhere in the Arctic. Where it is barely freezing north of Spitsbergen now, it is 20 degrees too cold in Greenland.” However, that does not take away the concerns. “We are now suddenly reaching that tipping point that it can also simply thaw in the winter at the North Pole. It has already rained a few times in the winter last year, and now again. We can no longer deny that temperatures are slowly rising, which is catastrophic in areas like the Arctic.”

Sahara sand pushed temperature 5 degrees lower than expected: “Never seen in my career”