Links tagged “arctic”

Flashback: 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 McKibben'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.

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.

Study finds glaciers in Glacier National Park retreated up to 6 times faster during the 1930’s than the past 40 years — Paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews