The coldest town in the northern hemisphere has brushed off concerns expressed by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation over low temperatures, claiming that locals have gotten used to such extreme weather.
Oymyakon in Russia’s northeastern Sakha republic has been nicknamed the “Cold Pole” for being one of the coldest inhabited places on Earth.
“Recently, thermometers broke when temperatures reached near-record in the Siberian village of Oymyakon,” the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation wrote with concern on Instagram over the weekend.
“The estimated temperature that night was around minus 62 degrees. Locals said they haven’t recorded such levels in the past 15 years,” it said.
The head of a local weather service said Monday that he shared DiCaprio’s concerns over climate change but noted that winters in the region were actually becoming warmer.
“We have been observing [the effects of] climate change annually since the 1980s. It is becoming warmer every year,” Alexander Arzhakov told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency Monday.
The weather expert went on to say that temperatures of negative 60 degrees were not considered unusual for winters in the region and that locals had gotten used to the weather conditions.
This year, the average temperature for February in Yakutia was four degrees higher than the norm, Arzhakov added.
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