RED ALERT: Record temperatures in world's northernmost settlement

Temperatures hit a record 69.8 degrees Fahrenheit in Alert, the northernmost permanently inhabited spot on the planet less than 600 miles from the North Pole, the Canadian meteorology service has said. "It's quite phenomenal as a statistic, it's just one example among hundreds and hundreds of other records established by global warming," Armel Castellan, a meteorologist at the Canadian environment ministry told AFP on Tuesday.

The temperature -- 21 degrees on the Celsius scale -- was recorded on Sunday at Alert, a permanent military base on the 82nd parallel which intercepts Russian communications and which has been home to a weather station since 1950. The temperature was marked at 69.8 F on Sunday and 68 F the following day.

"It's an absolute record, we've never seen that before," said Castellan. Such highs so far north are "completely staggering," he said, noting that "for a week and a half we have had much higher temperatures than usual." The previous record of 68 degrees Fahrenheit was set on July 8, 1956, but since 2012 there have been several days where the temperature has risen to 66.2 F or 68 F at the base on the shore of the Arctic Ocean.

The average daily temperature in Alert in July is 38 F, with average maximum temperatures of 43 F. The current heatwave is due to a high pressure front over Greenland, which is "quite exceptional" and feeds southerly winds on the Arctic Ocean, said Castellan.

"Climate change has a very indirect or direct influence of course" on the new record temperature, all the more so since the Arctic is heating up three times faster than other parts of the planet, said Castellan, stressing the need for a drastic reduction in carbon emissions.