Weather- Arctic heatwave could break records – video
Temperatures at the North Pole could be up to 20 degrees higher than average this Christmas Eve, in what scientists say is a record-breaking heatwave. Climate scientists say these unseasonably warm weather patterns in the Arctic region are directly linked to man-made climate change. Temperatures throughout November and December were 5C higher than average. It follows a summer during which Arctic sea ice reached the second-lowest extent ever recorded by satellites.
Dr Friederike Otto, a senior researcher at Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute told that in pre-industrial times “a heatwave like this would have been extremely rare – we would expect it to occur about every 1,000 years”. Dr Otto added that scientists are “very confident” that the weather patterns were linked to anthropogenic climate change.
