Summer 2024 - the warmest in the last 2,000 years in Lapland

The summer of 2024 was the warmest recorded in Lapland in the last 2,000 years, according to data published by the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The region, which includes northern Finland, Norway and Sweden, has recorded record temperatures, amid accelerating climate change. "The average temperature last summer was the highest in both direct observations - available for the last two centuries - and in climate reconstructions obtained by analyzing tree rings," explained Mika Rantanen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, in a statement to AFP.

• Record figures

In the town of Sodankylä, located in northern Finland, summer temperatures were 2.1°C higher than the usual average. According to a study conducted in collaboration with the Finnish Institute of Natural Resources and published in the journal Nature, the average temperature between June and August reached 15.9°C, surpassing the previous record set in 1937 by 0.4°C.

The researchers point out that climate change has increased the probability of such a warm summer by a hundredfold. Without the influence of global warming, such an event would have been extremely rare, occurring once every 1,400 years. Today, however, such a summer could occur once every 16 years.

Rantanen warns that Lapland is on the verge of completely moving out of its natural climate range, with temperatures rising rapidly. This transformation is bringing visible and worrying effects: more frequent heat waves, forest fires and an accelerated greening of the tundra, changes that threaten the sensitive ecosystems of the Arctic and the lifestyles of local populations.

The Arctic region as a whole is warming four times faster than the global average, a phenomenon confirmed by several recent studies published in Nature.