The Left’s obsession with Russia continues – This time it’s a high temperature record.
By Anthony Watts
Over the past few days, social media and news media have been overheating over a new high temperature record in Russia far north Siberia. For example, in this trending tweet, a claim of “literally on fire”.
Founder of the climate activist organization, 350.org, the ever over-alarmed Bill McKibben, who once wrote an essay crying about wilting corn during a heat wave earning him the title of “weepy Bill”, Tweeted on the tentative new record set in Verkhoyansk Siberia, touted by the Washington Post:
“Siberian town tops 100 degrees F, the hottest temperature ever recorded north of the Arctic Circle. This scares me, I have to say.”
He’s scared? Obviously, he’s invoking the great universal boogeyman of “climate change” as the culprit here. After all, it’s what he does for a living. Predictably, The Independent called it part of the “climate crisis”.
But, what about the other times when it got that hot above the Arctic circle, before there was even a glimmer of “global warming” aka “climate change” becoming a science social justice cause?
For example, this Associated Press article says:
“…it was 100 degrees on June 27, 1915, in Fort Yukon, [Alaska] according to official records of the National Weather Service. Records date back to 1904.”
Inconveniently, that pretty much cools down Bill’s claim of “the hottest temperature ever recorded north of the Arctic Circle”. Both Verkhoyansk, Siberia and Fort Yukon, Alaska are well above the latitude that defines the Arctic Circle. How is it, that in 1915, when “climate change” supposedly due to increased carbon dioxide in our atmosphere wasn’t even a factor, it got that hot? Inquiring minds want to know.
Or how about the fact that the previous record in Verkhoyansk was 37.3C (99.1F) in 1988, also before “climate change” was even an issue on anyone’s radar, and CO2 in the atmosphere then was just below the 350 parts per million that Bill McKibben considers “safe” ?
FYI, 350.org was founded on that value.
What the Washington Post, “Weepy Bill”, and others who are using this tentative record to justify their views on “climate change” are ignoring is that Verkhoyansk is also the record holder for the coldest temperature record outside of Antarctica. In February 1892, it dropped to a shocking -90.0 degrees F, the coldest temperature ever recorded there. Verkhoyansk’s average low in January is -55 degrees Fahrenheit, and temperatures there regularly drop to -70 degrees Fahrenheit or below.
So, how can a place be both a poster child for global warming aka “climate change” and ice-age like global cooling at the same time? The answer is; it has the most highly variable temperature range on the planet due to its geography and normal meteorological patterns.
Verkhoyansk has an extreme subarctic climate dominated much of the year by high pressure. This has the effect of cutting off the region from warming influences in winter and together with a lack of cloud cover leads to extensive cold during the cooler months. In the summer, the opposite is true, leading to excessively high temperatures.
According to the Moscow Times:
“Verkhoyansk holds the Guinness World Record for the highest recorded temperature range of 105 C, fluctuating from minus 68 C to a high of 37 C. The previous temperature record for the isolated town of around 1,300 residents stood at 37.3 C in July 1988.”
In other words, such extremes are normal for the place. With just over a hundred years of temperature records there, and the planet being billions of years old, it isn’t at all surprising that we still haven’t measured the extremes of natural variation, both hot and cold, for this place.
