This summer, it makes a little more sense that the home of the world’s second-biggest ice sheet is named ‘Greenland’.
The island just broke its record for the ‘hottest’ day ever measured in June, Jyllands-Posten reports.
According to national weather institute DMI, the highest temperature was registered on June 15 in the southwestern town Kangerlussuaq, where it reached 23.2 degrees Celsius. That is 0.1 degrees warmer than the previous record of 23.1 that was measured on two occasions in 1988 and 2002.
Hot town
“It’s always warm in Kangerlussuaq in the summer, but there was plenty of hot air above the whole of Greenland during that period. Then it’s normal that Kangerlussuaq will get high temperatures,” explained Frank Nielsen of DMI in Greenland.
It’s hot air from Newfoundland and Canada that has cranked up the heat in the Arctic.
“It tends to get warmer – also in Greenland, where the ice is also melting. So there might be some high temperatures in the future,” he told Jyllands-Posten.
Highest and lowest
Kangerlussuaq residents have seen some extreme weather through the years.
Its highest ever temperature, 25.5 degrees, was measured in July 1990, while its lowest was in January 1989, when it dropped down to a bone-chilling 52.1 below zero.
