ABOVE: Modified satellite imagery of wildfires near Verkhoyansk, Russia, on June 16, 2019
FLICKR, PIERRE MARKUSE
The small Russian town of Verkhoyansk ushered in summer with a potentially record-breaking high of 38 °C this weekend (June 20), a searing exclamation point punctuating the region’s hottest winter on record.
The Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the globe, and National Geographic reports that winter average temperatures have already exceeded the 2 °C threshold set by the Paris climate agreement to limit catastrophic consequences. While the World Meteorological Organization is still working to verify Verkhoyansk’s record, scientists say it points to a troubling trend.
“The key point is that the climate is changing and global temperatures are warming,” Freja Vamborg, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Climate Change Service in the UK, tells the Associated Press. “We will be breaking more and more records as we go.” ...
