Too hot for Santa Claus like buckles in Lapland under a record heat wave

“Make sure the deer have a lot of water – and don’t forget to drink a glass and every hour,” a team of elves, busy with gifts for the next Christmas like Lapland Sulters in a record heat wave.

Not every day, the Father Christmas turns out to be informing his elves of the dangers of sunshine, but this summer Northern Finland is observed how temperatures move around 30 ° C for days.

As for Santa Claus, he will remain indoors during the bigger part of the day – his bright red suit, trimmed with fur, is very warm.

“I go swimming in the lake in the forest after 18:00, when the weather began to cool,” he says.

While Santa’s workshop in the city of Rovanami adapts with cheerful stability, unusually warm temperatures in the Arctic are a serious question – and scientists point to climate change as the culprit.

After unusually cold and rainy spring and early summer, all of Finland – including the far north of Lapland, 500 km (310 miles) above the Arctic Circle – suddenly caught a continuous hot weather spell.

The heat wave in Rovanami will last for 15 days until July 25.

In Finland, the thermal wave is defined as a period of at least three consecutive days when the daily maximum temperature exceeds 25 ° C.

The meteorologist of the Finnish Meteorological Institute of Jaakko Savela explains that in Lapland, where temperatures above 30 ° C are extremely rare, the heat waves and the current ones are exceptional.

“The last time Finnish Lapland had a similar long heat wave in 1972,” Savel says. But even this lasted only 12 to 14 days, depending on the exact location.

“This entry is already broken.”

Not only rovaniemi is covered by burning temperatures. Several other meteorological stations in Lapland have registered their longest thermal waves since the start of records.

The highest heat wave temperature, 31.7 ° C, was measured in two places, ylitornio and sodankylä, earlier this week. This is about 10 ° C above the average for the seasonal value for Lapland.

The heat wave caused a renewed concern about the accelerating rate of climate change in the Arctic, which warms four to five times faster than the rest of the earth.

Sava notes that this particular, long heat wave was not directly caused by climate change. However, he says that “climate change has an impact: without it the temperatures in the last two weeks would be lower.”

Prof. Jeff Weller, chairman of the University of Arctic at the University of Oulu, agrees.

Thermal waves and extreme meteorological events in the summer and winter become so common that they can only be caused by fundamental changes in the air -conditioning system.

“Every day, climate change is manifested in extreme heat and extreme rainfall events,” says Prof. Weller. “The climate change print is on us.”

Thermal waves are becoming more common due to the climatic changes caused by humans, according to the UN intergovernmental panel to climate change.

The extremely hot weather will happen more often – and it will become even more intensive – as the planet continues to warm, she said.

Extreme heat also affects the famous deer of Lapland.

They were celebrated globally as Santa’s sledges at Christmas, here the deer wander freely in the forests and falls. But as mosquitoes are pursued – which thrive in hot weather – deer are already running on roads and villages in search of relief.

“For the deer, the only option would be to reach higher, larger hills, but in the Finnish Lapland, the highest elevation is only about 1000 m (3,300 feet),” says Prof. Weller.

He adds that as more extreme and longer thermal waves will appear more frequent in the Arctic in the future, “deer herds may have to build large barns to provide a shadow for their animals.”

Not only Santa and his deer are fighting. Lapland is traditionally known as a cool tourist destination – but this year visitors are puzzled.

“It’s a super hot-30C here. I came to escape from the heat,” says Sylvia, a tourist from Prague, visiting Santa’s festive village in Rovanimi.

“I was expecting a very colder weather and packing the wrong clothes. I have only one short-sleeved T-shirt-I have a number every day.”

This does not help that the days in Rovani is currently 20 hours a day, so the sun is still shining until 23:00 – maintaining temperatures for a long time.

Make a shady patch in Santa Park is an Adit of London, who expected to find temperatures below 20 ° C here. “I can hardly even go beyond the shadow, I feel like I’m on fire when I do it,” she says.

“Something similar is happening in the UK, but I am very surprised to see this in the Arctic Circle,” she says. “Ice and snow are so inseparable to this amusement park and all over Lapland.”

Elina, an elf working in Santa’s mail, is also worried about the future of Lapland’s winters: “I wonder if the heat waves are already the new normal.”

There is an additional problem for Santa that he should wear his heavy suit every day of the year.

Currently, he goes outdoors only in the evening after the air starts to cool, otherwise he risks getting a heat stroke in just 10 minutes.

“Of course, the hot summer can be very nice for some, but I prefer cold and snow,” he says. “Winter is better.”