If anyone needs a clear example of the existence of climate change, this is it.
The town of Rovaniemi in Finland, located within the Arctic Circle, is currently experiencing a heatwave.
Finns are flocking to the beach to soak up the sun as temperatures have reached highs of 31°C in the Arctic Circle – very different to its usual status as a festive wonderland.
Santa’s elves and reindeers will be sweating in Father Christmas’s workshop, as the town’s Santa Claus Village showed the temperature on a digital display.
While the weather will of course be warmer in mid-July compared to the Christmas period, normally northern Finland only reaches up to about 20°C in the summer months.
Locals certainly weren’t expecting the warm weather, with Rovaniemi resident Toivo Koivu saying:It’s pretty good. I like it. It’s hot. I don’t think it’s this hot too often here.
‘I was on vacation for a few weeks going down through Europe with Interrail with a few of my buddies and it was very hot and we thought that when we would come back to Finland it would be cooler like normally, but no, it’s actually the same weather as down south.’
Thermostats hitting 30°C is pretty rare within the Arctic Circle, but the phenomenon is becoming increasingly common.
According to a study published in the journal Nature, last summer was exceptionally warm in northern Scandinavia and Finland, breaking the June to August record set in 1937.
Finland as a whole is experiencing a heatwave at the moment, with its hottest temperature of the summer so far recorded on Monday at 32.4°C.
The country’s meteorological office warned the heatwave is expected to continue throughout the rest of the week, although southern areas were drenched by a strong thunderstorm and heavy rain earlier this week.
Heatwaves are triggered in Finland when daily average temperatures reach 20°C or the country experiences highs of 27°C.
The bulk of the country, aside from a handful of southern regions, is under a yellow heatwave or wildfire warning, with a few coastal regions facing yellow warnings for high winds.
While the UK isn’t currently in a heatwave, we have seen three heatwaves practically back-to-back, and generally speaking we see warmer temperatures than Finland as we’re closer to the equator.
Today, however, The Met Office reckons London is the hottest part of the UK, reaching around 25°C, with the rest of the country in the low 20s.
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