This is the basic climate review for Summer 2026 for the Arctic. The status of sea ice at the end of August is covered here, and a recap of 2026 Arctic wildfire season is here. I’ll add a separate post with the Alaska August and Summer 2026 climate summary.
Temperatures
Summer 2026 average temperatures around the Arctic show remarkable warmth in parts of Siberia (some areas had a three-month average more than 5°C above normal) and in the eastern Canadian Arctic. About 12 percent of the Arctic had the warmest summer since 1950 in ERA5 reanalysis, while only about 1 percent of the area (all over the Arctic Ocean) had the coolest summer. Overall, about 75 percent of lands and seas north of 60°N had a June through August average temperature above the 1991-2020 baseline normal.
Fig. 1 June-August 2026 average temperature departure from the 1991-2020 baseline average. Data from ERA5 courtesy of ECMWF/Copernicus.
This was the warmest summer since 1950 for northwest Siberia (Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug), central Siberia (Krasnoyarsk Krai) as well as Nunavut, Canada. However, in spite of well above normal temperatures over northern Greenland, the area within about 1100 km of the North Pole (80 to 90°latitude) had the coolest summer since 2014.
For the Arctic overall (land and seas poleward of 60°N), the average temperature for the summer was the highest since 1950, edging out 2016 and 2023 (Fig 2). The increase in average summer temperatures since the 1980s of about 1.5°C doesn’t sound like much, but is quite significantly considering that over ice covered oceans, air temperatures in summer remain quite close to freezing as heat goes into melting snow and ice instead of warming the air.
Fig. 2 June-August average surface temperature 60° to 90°N (lands and seas) each year 1950 to 2026. Time varying average estimated via piece-wise linear regression. Data from ERA5 courtesy of ECMWF/Copernicus.
The highest temperatures during the summer over most of the Arctic occur during June or July, when solar heating is near the annual maximum. As a general rule, the highest temperatures occur at low elevations in areas well removed from moderating influences of oceans, while areas on the ice pack and on ice sheets don’t get much above freezing (or never do so on the high elevations of the Greenland Ice Sheet). These features are evident in the 2026 maximum temperatures (Fig. 3).
There were a number of notable extreme temperatures in the Arctic this summer, especially in the Eurasian Arctic. Beliy Island (73.3°N), just offshore of the Yamal Peninsula in northwest Siberia, reached 28.3°C (83°F) on June 25. This is apparently the highest temperature on record anywhere so far north. In early July, the middle Lena River valley in the Sakha Republic, Russia reached above 35°C on a few days, including 37.7°C (100°F) at Namsty (north of Yakutsk) on July 8. In the North American Arctic, the highest temperatures this summer occurred in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Temperatures exceeded 30°C in late June and again in mid-July around Great Slave Lake and in the Dehcho region of the southwest NWT where Lindberg Landing reported 35.0°C (95°F) on July 21.
Fig. 3 Summer 2026 highest hourly temperature in the AgERA5 reanalysis. Data courtesy of ECMWF/Copernicus.
Sea surface temperatures
High latitude summer average ocean surface temperatures, to a significant degree, the timing of sea ice loss relative to typical date of ice loss. Continuing the pattern of the past few years, summer average sea surface temperatures were below normal from the eastern East Siberian Sea eastward to the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, and above normal over the Atlantic sector. Waters in the Laptev Sea, north of central Siberia, were much cooler this summer than the past several years due to more persistent sea ice.
Fig. 4 June through August 2026 average sea surface temperature departures from the 1991-2020 baseline average. OISSTv2.1 data courtesy NOAA/PSL/ESRL.
Precipitation
Total summer precipitation for the Arctic overall was just 2 percent above the 1991-2020 average, but as always there were significant variations over short distances. Notably, well below normal totals in both the Northwest Territories, Canada and in the central and western Asian Arctic were, not coincidently, correlated with high wildfire activity. In the far north, the area poleward of 80°N were exceptionally wet (and snowy) this summer, with by far the highest precipitation (and snowfall) since 1950. Well above normal totals over land areas in some cases were associated with extreme short term (1 to 5-days) totals, leading to river flooding during July in parts of southcentral Alaska and in thesouthern Sakha Republic, Russia.
Fig. 5 June-August 2026 total precipitation categories based on percentiles of the 1991-2020 reference period. Data from ERA5 courtesy of ECMWF/Copernicus.