Febru­ary tem­pe­ra­tures in Lon­gye­ar­by­en 15 degrees abo­ve avera­ge

In Febru­ary, the avera­ge tem­pe­ra­tu­re was no less than 15 degrees abo­ve the long-term avera­ge. For weeks, the tem­pe­ra­tures have oscil­la­ted around free­zing. Only the first 10 days, the air was at -10°C or below. Sin­ce then, tem­pe­ra­te Atlan­tic air­mas­ses have moved north to push col­der, arc­tic air­mas­ses fur­ther away.

Meteo­ro­lo­gists have cal­cu­la­ted the avera­ge tem­pe­ra­tu­re of Febru­ary in Lon­gye­ar­by­en to be -1.2°C. The long-term avera­ge for Febru­ary is -16.2°C.

It can be assu­med that it is not only the air that is curr­ent­ly war­mer than it used to be, but also the waters around Spits­ber­gen. The ice situa­ti­on seems to con­firm this, as lar­ge parts of the waters east and north of Spits­ber­gen are far more open than they usual­ly are at this time of the year. Even inner bran­ches of the fjords such as Tem­pel­fjord and Bil­lefjord have not yet real­ly fro­zen over so far.

The cur­rent wea­ther fore­cast for the next 10 days does at least not show any tem­pe­ra­tures abo­ve free­zing. While it was not far below zero in Lon­gye­ar­by­en over the weekend, tem­pe­ra­tures at the east coast were said to be near -30°C.

Also in Nor­way, the win­ter has, so far, been far mil­der than it usual­ly is.

Source: NRK

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