© Pau Sayrol/UnsplashA grey day in Trondheim.
Several Norwegian cities are on course for their lowest average July temperatures since the 1990s.
Inconsistent, grey Norwegian summer weather in recent weeks has not been limited to a single area of the country with a number of areas seeing their chilliest month of July for decades, news agency NTB reports.
Central county Trรธndelag and South Norway alike will see continued cold, wet weather towards the end of the month.
"Cold weather from the west has resulted in colder temperatures and variable summer weather across large parts of South Norway in July," MET Norway meteorologist Rannveig Oftedal Eikill told NTB.
Should temperatures continue to remain low for its remaining days, July 2020 may end up with the coldest average temperature for the summer month since the 1990s.
That may be the case in several major cities.
"In Oslo we have to go back to 1993, Bergen 1996, and Trondheim all the way back to 1962 to find similarly low average temperatures," said Gunnar Livik, also a meteorologist with MET Norway, to NTB.
North Norway, on the other hand, has had higher average temperatures in July.But holidaymakers on the northern Finnmark plateau should pack both shorts and a raincoat.
"In Troms and Finnmark County they have had everything from 13 degrees (Celsius) in Hammerfest, to 27 degrees in Southeast Finnmark," Eikill said.But weather in the latter area had also brought torrential rain and a number of thunderstorms on Wednesday, she added.
Comment: Reuters reports on the record high measured in Norway's Arctic archipelago:
Temperatures at Norway's Svalbard archipelago, about midway between the mainland and the North Pole, hit a record high of 21.7 degrees Celsius on Friday, Norway's Meteorological Institute said.
The Arctic islands are warming faster than almost anywhere on Earth, highlighting risks in other parts of the Arctic from Alaska to Siberia, a Norwegian report said last year.
"A 41-year-old record has been broken in Longyearbyen," the Meteorological Institute said on Twitter.
Between 1700 and 1800 CET (1500-1600 GMT), the temperature measured 21.7 degrees Celsius, 0.4 degrees above the previous record from 1979, it added.
Home to more than 2,000 people, Longyearbyen, the main settlement in Svalbard, is about 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) from the North Pole.
The Norwegian Centre for Climate Studies said last February average temperatures in Svalbard had leapt between three and five degrees Celsius (5.4-9.0 Fahrenheit) since the early 1970s and could rise by a total of 10C (18F) by 2100, if world greenhouse gas emissions keep climbing.
Rising temperatures would thaw the frozen ground underpinning many buildings, roads and airports and could cause more avalanches and landslides, it added.
Two people died in 2015 when an avalanche destroyed 10 houses in Longyearbyen.
A warming climate also threatens Arctic wildlife such as polar bears and seals which depend on the sea ice cover.
See also:
Comment: Reuters reports on the record high measured in Norway's Arctic archipelago: See also: