2020 heat record in Siberian town

Subject – Environment

Context – WMO confirms 2020 heat record in Siberian town

Concept –

Verkhoyansk, a town in Siberia, recorded a temperature of 38 degrees Celsius on June 20, 2020. It was then pushed as the highest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic region.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has now confirmed that the Siberian town, 115 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, did experience the highest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic region.
The Arctic region is warming at more than twice the rate as the rest of the world, mainly because of human-made greenhouse gas emissions. The increased rate of warming is because of a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification, wherein the melting ice hastens the process of warming by exposing areas that are not good at reflecting back heat into the atmosphere.
The impact of warming on the region is such that the WMO has added a new category — “highest recorded temperature at or north of 66.5⁰C, the Arctic Circle” — to its international Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes.

Siberia

Is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east.
It has been a part of Russia since the latter half of the 16th century, after the Russians conquered lands east of the Ural Mountains.
Siberia is vast and sparsely populated.
The river Yenisey divides Siberia into two parts, Western and Eastern.
Siberia stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the northern parts of Mongolia and China.
Siberia is known worldwide primarily for its long, harsh winters, with a January average of −25 °C.
It is geographically situated in Asia; however, due to it being colonized and incorporated into Russia, it is culturally and politically a part of Europe.

International Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes

The WMO Archive maintains official records of the world, hemispheric and regional extremes associated with a number of specific types of weather.
Presently, the Archive lists extremes for temperature, pressure, rainfall, hail, wind, and lightning as well as two specific types of storms, tornadoes and tropical cyclones.
One common weather variable, snowfall, is not listed because of potential issues in consistent official measurement around the world.