The far north town of Iqaluit in Canada is experiencing extraordinary heat. Temperature spikes in the far north are a sudden climate change danger signal, and the situation in this area is highly unusual.
“We’ve had a really stagnant situation,” saod Yvonne Wallace, a meteorologist with Environment Canada’s Arctic Weather Centre in Edmonton. Four Iqaluit records were broken in July. “You had an amazing month here,” she said.
On July 15, the temperature reached an all-time record of 75F, breaking a record set in the 1980s. Again on July 27, a temperature of 74F broke a 1969 record.
During the last period of sudden climate change 14,000 years ago, arctic temperatures are believed by paleoclimatlogists to have spiked into the 80-90F range. Obviously, temperatures being reached now are not far from that area.
Unknowncountry.com’s Quickwatch keeps tabs on Gulf Stream flow, arctic ice cover, North Atlantic water temperatures and magnetic north pole temperatures, which have been moving up as high as 50F recently.
There is also evidence that the flow of the Gulf Stream is not as strong as it should be. If it should suddenly stop flowing, a period of climate chaos would be in the offing. There is no definite evidence that this might happen soon, but unfortunately scientific knowledge of the conditions under which this might take place is sketchy.
Current Iqaluit weather calls for a return to more normal conditions over the next five days.
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