Arctic Temperatures

[ UPDATED 24 MAY 2022 ]

 

Published data were used to analyse the long-term annual temperature trends at ten locations located in the Arctic region. Stations, all at latitudes of greater than 75 deg N, were located in Canada, Greenland, Norway and Russia.

The data used were all from the website of KNMI (the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute). Only raw data were used (ie as originally recorded, without any adjustments).  All of the stations were located in small settlements or at arctic research stations.

The periods of the data ranged from 38 years to 76 years of complete years.   The earliest record, at Isfjord Radio, commencing in 1912.

The plots shown below are of the annual mean temperatures at each of the ten locations. On each plot a linear regression line to indicate the average trend over the period of records.  It is emphasised that the periods of all records are short and inadequate to determine long-term trends in temperature.

 

ANNUAL MEAN TEMPERATURE TRENDS FOR INDIVIDUAL STATIONS

Eureka (Canada) 1948-2014

 

Alert (Canada) 1950-2004

 

Nord ADS (Greenland) 1952-2015

 

Danmarkshavn (Greenland) 1951-2018

 

Isfjord Radio (Norway) 1912-1980

 

Svalbard (Norway) 1978-2018

 

Krenkelja (Russia) 1958-2018

 

Ostrov Vize (Russia) 1951-2018

 

Fedorova (Russia) 1933-2018

 

Ostrov Kotel’nyj (Russia) 1933-2015

 

 

COMMENTS & CONCLUSIONS

• All of the ten stations show a marked increase in annual mean temperature since the 1960s.  Svalbard and Krenkelja show an increase of about 5 degC, while Alert shows an increase of about 1 degC.

•  Five of the stations have no or only sparse data since about 2000.

•  No useful trendlines are possible.  The linear regression line show is solely meant as a baseline to observe the variation in annual values.

•  The Svalbard record is recorded at Longyearbeyan.  A longer record at Longyearbeyan since 1899 has been derived by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and this has been used in a separate analysis:   https://briangunterblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/23/arctic-sub-arctic-temperature-trends-1/

 

Please let me know what you think of this analysis.

brigun (at) westnet.com.au

 

THE AUTHOR

  This article was written by Brian Gunter of Narooma, NSW. In his previous life Brian was an engineering hydrologist involved over many years in the analysis of rainfall and river flow data for the planning of water resources projects in Australia, Asia and Africa. In recent years he has been one of the Marine Rescue NSW (previously Royal Volunteer Coastal Patrol) volunteer weather observers who operate the Narooma station for the Bureau of Meteorology.