Unprecedented January in the Arctic: Spring temperatures in the middle of winter

Greenland's capital, Nuuk, experienced its warmest January ever recorded, breaking a 109-year-old record, amid a sharp warming across the entire west coast of the Arctic island. The announcement was made by the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), as quoted by the AFP agency. Paradoxically, the phenomenon occurred while large parts of Europe and North America were experiencing a severe cold snap. In Nuuk, the average monthly temperature in January reached 0.1 degrees Celsius - 7.8 degrees above the climatological average of the last three decades. This value exceeds the city's previous historical record, set in 1917, by 1.4 degrees Celsius, confirming the exceptional magnitude of the episode.

• Records in a row on Greenland's west coast

The warming was not limited to the capital. According to the DMI, from the southern tip of Greenland to the west coast - a distance of more than 2,000 kilometers - January temperatures broke local monthly records. A case in point is the town of Ilulissat, located in Disko Bay, where the average monthly temperature was minus 1.6 degrees Celsius. This is 1.3 degrees higher than the previous record set in 1929 and about 11 degrees above the multi-year January average. On the warmest day of the month, thermometers in Nuuk showed values up to 11.3 degrees Celsius - an extremely rare temperature for this region in the middle of an Arctic winter.

• "A clear indication that something is changing"

Climatologists warn that the magnitude and duration of this heat episode exceed the usual fluctuations in the weather. "Warmer air sometimes reaches the Greenland region, bringing milder temperatures for a day or two. But such a prolonged heat record over such a large area is a clear indication that something is changing,” said Martin Olesen, a climatologist at DMI. According to him, the trend is part of the global dynamics of climate warming: more high temperature records and progressively fewer cold extremes. Recent data confirms that the Arctic region is at the forefront of climate change. Temperatures in the Arctic have been rising about four times faster than the global average since 1979, according to a study published in 2022 in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. This acceleration has major implications, from accelerated melting of ice sheets and rising sea levels, to changes in atmospheric circulation, with effects felt even in temperate zones of the planet.