2014 will go down in the history of Norway as a year of heat records, intense rainfall periods and flooding. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute on Monday presented a report stating that 2014 was the warmest in history. The last record was noticed in 2011, when the average annual temperature was 1.8 °C above normal.
The month of February was the most unusual, with an average temperature in the northernmost county of Finnmark at 10 °C and on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard at 14.5 degrees warmer than usual.
Also on a global scale 2014 was a warm year. The average temperature was 0.68 degrees higher than normal during the first eleven months of the year, climate researcher Reidun Gangstø says to NRK.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in December 2014 published its annual Arctic Report Card. The report shows that Arctic air temperatures continue to rise at more than twice the rate of global air temperatures.
