Finland. An unprecedented heat wave in the Arctic reaches a peak of 34 degrees

Finnish Lapland, Finland’s most northerly Arctic region, recorded its highest temperatures in a century, at 33.6 degrees Celsius (92.5 Fahrenheit), in a heat wave that has battered the northern country for weeks.

The Finnish Meteorological Institute measured the temperature at the Utsjoki-Kevo weather station near the Norwegian border.

The institute said that only a higher temperature was recorded in Lapland, 34.7 degrees Celsius in the Inari Thule region in July 1914.

The first days of July were exceptionally warm in Lapland, one of the last European wastelands with extremely cold winters and attracting nature lovers from all over the world in both winter and summer. The region, which is the largest in Finland, has the lowest temperature records in the country.

“It is exceptional in Lapland that temperatures are above 32 degrees Celsius,” Gary Tovenen of the Meteorological Institute told YLE public station.

He added that the heat wave in Lapland is the product of warm air caused by high pressure to which “warm air coming from central Europe to the north through the Norwegian Sea” is added, Tovenen told YLE.

Norway and Sweden also recorded high temperatures in the north, reaching 34 degrees Celsius in the Norwegian municipality of Saltdal.

The Finnish temperature record was set at 37.2 degrees in the eastern city of Joensuu in 2010, according to YLE.

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