Russia has recorded a new record for May temperatures. While on Wednesday the 19th temperatures reached 30°C in the village of Nizhnaya Pesha, straddling the Arctic Circle, on the following 23 May in Khasavyurt, a city in southern Russia, they came close to 40°C (39.7°C). An all-time record for the region, it confirms the trend towards a particularly unusual warming of the entire Arctic. As Siberian weather extremes hit new records, the wildfire season has begun in Canada, giving rise to large fires in Manitoba and Ontario, producing dense plumes of smoke that have been carried hundreds of kilometres across the Atlantic.

Scott Duncan @ScottDuncanWX

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It was hotter in the Arctic than pretty much all of your favourite European holiday destinations today.

This thread explains what is going on.

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"These temperatures in northern Russia are astonishing. Some weather stations have broken the May heat record by more than 4°C," Scott Duncan, a Scottish meteorologist monitoring the situation in real time, tells LifeGate. "Even if this heat is not as long-lasting and intense as last summer's Siberian heat, this early heatwave is unprecedented."

The Arctic is warming rapidly

In the latest document drawn up by the Arctic monitoring and assessment programme, Arctic warming is estimated to be three times greater than the average recorded in the rest of the planet. "These continuous records do nothing but confirm the underlying warming," Duncan continues. "It is therefore no surprise that we are continuously breaking record after record."

Scott Duncan @ScottDuncanWX

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The Arctic is warming very fast, this makes profound heatwaves more likely (and extreme thresholds easier to break).

I discuss the rates of Arctic warming vs the global average warming rate here.

x.com/ScottDuncanWX/…

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In less than fifty years, the average temperature of the polar region has already risen by 3.1°C. "We must not forget that the Arctic can become surprisingly warm, far warmer than is generally thought," the meteorologist explains. "There are many examples of warm days in the Arctic, but recently they have been becoming increasingly extreme. Moreover, the unusual situation of Europe being very cold (for this time of year) has made the heat in Arctic Russia even more bizarre."

The wildfire season has begun

As these temperatures are being recorded, the wildfire season has also begun, in Canada and Siberia. As the Copernicus atmosphere monitoring service (Cams) reports, "although fire activity in eastern Siberia is below average, the most affected regions of western Siberia are raising concerns among scientists at this early stage of the season."

Cams scientists explain that in previous years the fires typical of this season have shown an increase in the Arctic Circle, particularly in Asian Russia. Monitoring data show a sharp rise in the number of fires in 2019 and 2020 compared with the rest of the dataset, which goes back to 2003, leading to a new record for the annual total of estimated CO2 emissions in 2020 in the Arctic Circle: 244 megatonnes, compared with 181 megatonnes in 2019.

"It is still too early to estimate the impact and extent of this year's boreal wildfire season and of fires in the Arctic and subarctic region," says Mark Parrington, a wildfire expert at Ecmwf, in a statement. "Even though it is not unusual to see some fires during spring at high latitudes, it is difficult to predict what we can expect during the summer."