Update of 15 December 2021 – The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has officially recognised the maximum temperature record registered on 20 June 2020 in the Russian city of Verkhoyansk. The mercury had risen to 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit): a value not only unusual but utterly extraordinary for a region like Siberia.

The United Nations agency specified that during that period "and for much of last summer, temperatures recorded in that Arctic area exceeded the seasonal average by 10 degrees Celsius, encouraging the spread of devastating wildfires and severe melting of polar ice. This contributed significantly to making 2020 one of the three warmest years ever observed".

The Verkhoyansk meteorological station has regularly recorded temperatures since 1885. The location is situated approximately 115 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle in northern Yakutia. An area characterised by an extreme continental climate.

"This new Arctic record," commented WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas, "is part of a series of data reported to our agency concerning extreme meteorological and climatic events. Data that represent a wake-up call. Also in 2020, another heat record (18.3 degrees Celsius) was registered in Antarctica. We are also working to verify the record of 54.4 degrees registered in the hottest place on the planet, Death Valley in California, as well as the peak of 48.8 degrees reached in Sicily this summer".

The Arctic is one of the regions in the world where temperatures are rising fastest, relative to the global average. For this reason, a group of WMO experts decided to create a new measurement category: that of the "highest temperature ever recorded north of the Arctic Circle".

An exceptionally intense and prolonged heatwave is striking Siberia in these days. Following the records set during the month of May, what is one of the coldest inhabited regions on Earth is recording new historic anomalies. On 9 June, the temperature reached 30 degrees Celsius in Nizhnyaya Pesha: entirely unusual conditions for the area. "I was born in Siberia, I have lived here for 60 years and I have no memory of a spring like this," journalist Sergei Zubchuk had declared some weeks earlier to the daily The Moscow Times.

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Climate crisis: alarm at record-breaking heatwave in Siberia theguardian.com/environment/20…

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Alarming situation in Siberia: the risk now is that wildfires will break out

A situation that was "unquestionably alarming," climatologist Freja Vamborg had commented in the pages of the Guardian. And which now appears even worse: on yesterday, Saturday 20 June, in the village of Verkhoyansk – a small town of one thousand inhabitants in the Autonomous Republic of Sakha-Yakutia (eastern Siberia) – the mercury is reported to have reached 38 degrees Celsius. The figure has yet to be officially confirmed, but should it be, it would represent the all-time record for the area.

The risk is that temperatures this high could represent the perfect conditions for the development of another season of severe wildfires, as already occurred in the Arctic Circle in 2019. A vicious cycle born of climate change.