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Sweden records coldest temperature of the century

The Local Sweden
The Local Sweden - [email protected]
Sweden records coldest temperature of the century
Vittangi, some 70 kilometres south-east of Kiruna, Sweden's northernmost city. Photo: Emma-Sofia Olsson/TT

The January big freeze led to Sweden not just noting the coldest temperature of the season, but the coldest of the century.

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New stats reveal that temperatures dropped to -44.6C in the village of Vittangi in the far north of Sweden on January 5th.

That's colder than the previous record of the century, and indeed millennium, -44C in 2001 in northern Dalarna.

The new record was only confirmed on Monday, after several of national weather agency SMHI's meteorological stations occasionally failed to record data during Sweden's recent cold snap.

“When local people start posting pictures of their thermometers on social media, then you know that this is not the everyday life happening out there!” a reader in Vittangi told The Local earlier this month.

LIFE IN SWEDEN'S BIG FREEZE:

It's possible that it's been even colder, but -44.6C is the coldest confirmed temperature.

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It is not, however, the lowest temperature ever recorded in Sweden. That record is held by Vuoggatjålme, where the mercury dropped to -52.6C in 1966.

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Emma Löfgren, Editor 2024/01/16 06:22
Hi Steven, it's hard to draw conclusions from single weather events, and different regions in the world are seeing different effects of climate change. For example, scientists believe that rain and floods will be one of the ways it will impact Scandinavia (https://www.thelocal.se/20230905/rain-and-floods-how-global-heating-could-alter-nordic-summers). Sweden may have had a cold start to 2024, and a rather wet and dreary autumn, but 2023 was also overall Earth's by far warmest year on record.
Steven Johnson 2024/01/16 06:10
What happened to all that Global Warming we've been getting taxed on? The world is heating up, all the ice is melting, the oceans are rising....

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