The weather agency confirmed that Canadian Forces Station Alert hit a record of 21 C on Sunday. On Monday, the military listening post on the top of Ellesmere Island had reached 20 C by noon and inched slightly higher later in the day.
Alert was warmer both days than Victoria, B.C., a Canadian go-to for balmy climes.
The average July high for Alert is 7 C. Phillips said that means the heat wave at the top of the world is the equivalent of Toronto registering a daytime high of 42 C.
“It’s nothing that you would have ever seen.”
Phillips said it’s the latest anomaly in what’s been a long, hot summer across the Arctic.
Iqaluit, Nunavut, saw the mercury rise to 23.5 C on July 9 – the highest ever for that day. Alaska had its second-warmest June on record.
Records have been falling – not by fractions, but by large margins.
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“It’s not just half a degree or a 10th of a millimetre. It’s like hitting a ball out of the ballpark. It is so different than what the previous record was.”
In Alert’s case, the source of the Arctic beach weather is a large current of air that somehow found its way north from the U.S. southeast, Phillips said.
It could be related to changes in the jet stream, a fast-moving high-altitude river of air that moves west to east. That current has slowed in recent years and has become more unstable, sometimes looping much farther north or south than normal.
“It’s almost as if you’re seeing these extremes more often because of the jet stream that has a different look and a different pattern,” Phillips said. “That’s what we saw when we had those 20-degree temperatures in Iqaluit.”
It’s part of a pattern, he said. He’s cautious about attributing specific events to any one cause, but not about naming one of the main drivers.
“You don’t need to throw out the Constitution.”
“With temperatures you’ve never seen before, you can’t dismiss it as not having a climate change component.”
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