‘Arctic heat wave’ hits world's northernmost settlement

MONTREAL: Temperatures hit a record 69.8 degrees Fahrenheit in Alert, the northernmost permanently inhabited spot on the planet less than 600 miles from the North Pole, the Canadian meteorology service said Tuesday.

"It's quite phenomenal as a statistic, it's just one example among hundreds and hundreds of other records established by global warming," Armel Castellan, a meteorologist at the Canadian environment ministry told AFP.

The temperature, 21 degrees on the Celsius scale, was recorded on Sunday at Alert, a permanent military base on the 82nd parallel which intercepts Russian communications and which has been home to a weather station since 1950.

In October, a landmark United Nations report warned that time is running out to avert global disaster and that avoiding climate chaos will require an unprecedented transformation of society and the world economy. Alert's record was marked at 69.8 F on Sunday and 68 F the following day. "It's an absolute record, we´ve never seen that before," said Castellan. Such highs so far north are "completely staggering," he said, noting that "for a week and a half we have had much higher temperatures than usual." -