Norway breaks record for its highest temperature in January today 2 days into 2020
The January temperature record in Norway was broken not once, but twice on Thursday morning.
A temperature of 18.6 degrees Celsius, the hottest ever in Norway in January, was recorded at Åndalsnes in the county of Møre and Romsdal earlier on Thursday.
The new record was very short-lived, with 19.0°C measured later in the day at Sunndalsøra, also in Møre and Romsdal, NTB reported.
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“A strong foehn [dry, warm down-slope wind, ed.] such as the one we have now makes it exciting to see whether we can get even higher or whether this was the maximum,” meteorologist Martin Granerød of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute told NTB.
The previous record, 17.9 degrees Celsius at Tafjord, dates to January 28th, 1989.
Granerød described Thursday morning’s weather as “like a fine summer’s day in Norway”.
Another county, Trøndelag, also saw its own January temperature record broken on the second day of 2020, according to Adressa.
A weather station at Trondheim-Voll measured 10.2°C between 6am and 7am, the highest during January since the station was opened in 1923. The previous record there, 10.1°C, was from January 31st, 1950.
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The warm temperatures reflect more than natural weather variations, a climate expert said.
“It has got warmer and it is still getting warmer,” said Reidun Gangstø Skaland of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.
“The winter is getting shorter. This is a clear trend in Norway. The average number of days in which the temperature is under zero (degrees Celsius) has been reduced by over half a month,” Skaland continued.
“But there are large variations, and in several places the number of days with sub-zero temperatures has been reduced by more than a whole month compared to the previous standard from the period 1960-1990. Climate change will cause this trend to continue,” she said.
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2019 CALENDAR NOW ON SALE
