Hot as in the Nordic countries – Helsingborgs Dagblad

Hot as in the Nordic countries – Helsingborgs Dagblad

Stockholm Published December 23, 2014 kl. 11:29 Updated 13:13

The mild autumn and winter is hardly a coincidence. The average temperature in Sweden has increased significantly more than in other countries, says climatologist Sverker Hellström. Especially since the 1980s. And the worse it will become.

The average temperature rises faster in Finland than elsewhere. The finding is further evidence that countries near the poles, such as Finland and Sweden, experience greater temperature increase than other countries due to climate change.

According to new research, the average temperature has risen nearly twice as fast in our eastern neighbor in rest of the world, more than two degrees since 1847. It shows a study of the Finnish equivalent of SMHI recently presented at an international conference in San Francisco in the United States.

In Sweden, the same development, says Sverker Hellström , climatologist at SMHI.

– You mean temperature has increased by about two degrees since 1860, while the “only” increased by 0.7 or 0.8 degrees globally. In the 1980s, it took really fast.

The reason, he says, is that both Finland and Sweden, located near the North Pole.

– The distribution of greenhouse gases is the same all over the globe. Increased amount of greenhouse gases resulting in reduced heat dissipation, which is especially marked in the places that have little heat radiation, which we have winter. As the temperature increase we have had in Sweden is primarily due to milder winters.

Sweden and Finland and other countries near the Arctic has thus already surpassed the increase in average global temperature by at most two degrees that the international community come agreed.

And according to Sverker Hellström evidence suggests that the difference between these countries and the world will increase even more in the future.

– According to our calculations, the average temperature in Sweden have increased by four degrees at the end of the century.

So it is perhaps not surprising that the fall we have had has been unusually warm.

– It is not just the fall. Probably the whole year to become the warmest we’ve ever had. Not only in Sweden but in large parts of Europe and probably also globally, says Sverker Hellström.

TT