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It’s not exactly earth-shattering news that this October was by far the warmest and wettest in Longyearbyen – that part already happened with all the landslides that occurred during the month due to the weird weather.
But some figures beyond the month and beyond Longyearbyen certainly might rattle folks.
The average temperature in Longyearbyen during October was 3.2 degrees Celsius, 8.7 degrees above normal and 1.8 degrees above the previous record set in 2000, according to the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. The highest temperature was 10.1 degrees on Oct. 7, the first time the city a double-digit temperature has been recorded at Svalbard Airport in recorded history.
“Svalbard Airport has not had a single month of below-normal temperatures since November of 2010, meaning 71 months in a row,” a report issued by the institute notes.
Similar records were set elsewhere in Svalbard including Ny-Ålesund at 1.9 degrees (7.6 degrees above normal and 1.2 higher than the previous record), Bjørnøya at 5.1 degrees (5.6 degrees above normal, 1.3 degrees above previous record), Hopen at 3.8 degrees (7.1 degrees above normal, 1.5 degrees above previous record) and Svea at 3.3 degrees ( 9.0 degrees above normal.
A record 57 millimeters of precipitation fell at Svalbard Airport during October, “which is 407 percent of normal,” according to the institute’s report. The wettest spot in Svalbard was Isfjord Radio with 138.7 millimeters, which is 308 percent of normal.
Svalbard’s weather coincides with monthly and long-term temperature records being set across the Arctic (The average of minus 1.1 degrees in Barrow, Alaska, for example, was about 7 degrees above normal) and a new record low for sea ice cover during October. The sea ice covered an average of 6.40 million square kilometers, 400,000 square kilometers less than the previous record set in October of 2007, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
