Global warming: Norway’s Svalbard records its highest-ever temperature

Norway's Arctic archipelago Svalbard on Saturday recorded its highest-ever temperature, the country's meteorological institute reported.

Published: 26 July 2020 10:50 CEST

Global warming: Norway's Svalbard records its highest-ever temperature

Photo by Thomas Lipke on Unsplash

According to scientific study, global warming in the Arctic is happening twice as fast as for the rest of the planet.

For the second day in a row, the archipelago registered 21.2 degrees Celsius (70.2 Fahrenheit) in the afternoon, just under the 21.3 degrees recorded in 1979, meteorologist Kristen Gislefoss told AFP.

Later in the afternoon however, at around 6:00 pm local time, it recorded 21.7 degrees, setting a new all-time record.

The island group, dominated by Spitzbergen the only inhabited isle in the northern Norway archipelago, sits 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the North Pole.

The relative heatwave, expected to last until Monday, is a huge spike of normal temperatures in July, the hottest month in the Arctic,

The Svalbard islands would normally expect to be seeing temperatures of 5-8 degrees Celsius at this time of year.

The region has seen temperatures five degrees above normal since January, peaking at 38 degrees in Siberia in mid-July, just beyond the Arctic Circle.

Photo by Vince Gx on Unsplash

According to a recent report “The Svalbard climate in 2100,” the average temperatures for the archipelago between 2070 and 2100 will rise by 7-10 degrees, due to the levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

Changes are already visible. From 1971 to 2017 between three and five degrees of warming have been observed, with the biggest rises in the winter, according to the report.

Svalbard, known for its polar bear population, houses both a coal mine, digging out the most global warming of all energy sources, and a “doomsday' seed vault which has since 2008 collected stocks of the world's agricultural bounty in case of global catastrophe

The vault required 20 million euros ($23.3 million) worth of work after the infiltration of water due to thawing permafrost in 2016.

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The archipelago is located halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, in an Arctic region that has become a geopolitical and economic hotspot as the ice melts and relations grow ever frostier between Russia and the West.

For €300 million ($326 million), interested parties can acquire the remote Sore Fagerfjord property in southwestern Svalbard.

Measuring 60 square kilometres (23 square miles) — about the size of Manhattan — the property is home to mountains, plains, a glacier and about five kilometres of coastline, but no infrastructure.

“It’s the last private land in Svalbard, and, to our knowledge, the last private land in the world’s High Arctic,” said lawyer Per Kyllingstad, who represents the sellers.

“The Chinese are naturally potential buyers since they’ve been showing a real interest in the Arctic and Svalbard for a long time,” he told AFP, adding that he had received “concrete signs of interest” from the country.

Special treaty

Since China’s 2018 white paper on the Arctic — a sign of its interest in the region — the country has defined itself a “near-Arctic state” and plans to play a growing role in the region.

Svalbard is governed by a 1920 international treaty that leaves ample room for foreign interests.

It recognises Norway’s sovereignty over Svalbard, but citizens of all signatories — including China — are equally entitled to exploit the region’s natural resources.

Russia, for example, has maintained a coal mining community on Svalbard, via the state-run company Trust Arktikugol, for decades.

But times have changed.

Keen to protect its sovereignty, Norway would not look kindly on the Sore Fagerfjord property falling into foreign hands.

Especially hands in China, which Norway’s intelligence services say poses the biggest security risk to the Scandinavian country after Russia.

Norway’s Attorney General has therefore ordered the owners — a company controlled by a Russian-born Norwegian, according to local media — to call off the planned sale.

“The land can’t be sold without the Norwegian authorities’ approval,” Trade and Industry Minister Cecilie Myrseth told AFP.

“Nor is it possible to hold negotiations about the property,” she added.

That argument is based on clauses of an old loan granted by the state in 1919. Kyllingstad insists the clauses’ statute of limitations has expired.