(CNN)Winter is still in full swing in the North Pole, but temperatures this week have been downright summerlike in the Arctic.
Although it is shrouded in the darkness of a 24-hour polar night, temperatures in the Arctic have soared well above freezing this week, marking the hottest temperatures recorded in the region during winter, according to scientists from the Danish Meteorological Institute.
Calculations from Cape Morris Jessup, the world's northernmost land-based weather station, show that temperatures from February in eastern Greenland and the central Arctic are averaging about 15°C (27°F) warmer than seasonal norms
And although the Arctic has seen temperatures climbing for decades, the past few years have seen the most extreme changes, according to Martin Stendel, a climate scientist at DMI. For the past 20 years, temperatures above freezing in February have only been recorded three times -- first in 2011, then in 2017 and now.
"For years, absolute values of temperatures have become higher and higher, but if you look a couple years back it's not so interesting whether the temperatures were minus 10 degrees C or minus 5 degrees C because the temperature was still well below zero," Stendel said.
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Arctic temperatures surge in the dead of winter - CNN
And that hardly matches this. But Edmonton need not worry, it won't be long before the weather warms enough that it will be back to normal, even with the Polar Vortex reaching south in the winter as it is deformed by the large Rossby Waves.
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