June, July: warm and wet

June and July pro­vi­ded some new ent­ries to a long ran­ge of record-brea­king wea­ther data in recent years. Cli­ma­te chan­ge is hap­pe­ning and it is stron­ger in the Arc­tic than else­whe­re.

The month­ly tem­pe­ra­tu­re avera­ge for June, as offi­ci­al­ly mea­su­red at Sval­bard air­port Lon­gyear, was as high as 8.3 degrees cen­ti­gra­de, hig­her than ever befo­re on record.

July was 1.3 degrees war­mer than the month­ly avera­ge, which now refers to the refe­rence peri­od of 1991-2020, a peri­od alre­a­dy signi­fi­cant­ly war­mer than the pre­vious refe­rence peri­od 1961-1990.

Tem­pe­ra­tu­re records in Spitz­ber­gen: tra­vel­lers could enjoy some warm and sun­ny sum­mer days both on small boats and on big ships …

But what real­ly caught the meteorologist’s atten­ti­on in July was the pre­ci­pi­ta­ti­on rather than tem­pe­ra­tu­re. With a stun­ning 48.7 mmm, it was more than twice as much rain than usu­al (20 mm), as the meteo­ro­lo­gist at Sval­bard air­port told Sval­bard­pos­ten. And inde­ed the­re were some very wet days in July, as both locals and tou­rists can con­firm. The small pede­stri­an bridge Per­le­por­ten in Lon­gye­ar­by­en (named after a coas­tal cave on Bjørnøya) was dama­ged by tor­ren­ti­al run­off during strong rain­falls.

… but the­re was also wind, fog and rain, and not too litt­le of it all. This is the pede­stri­an bridge Per­le­por­ten in Lon­gye­ar­by­en, which was dama­ged during hea­vy rain­falls.

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