THIS POST IS A CRITICAL COMMENTARY ON TEMPERATURE EXTREMES IN VERKHOYANSK, RUSSIA THAT ARE CLAIMED AS EVIDENCE OF THE EXTREME HEAT EFFECTS OF ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING. THERE ARE MANY SUCH STORIES IN THE POPULAR PRESS. VERKHOYANSK IS ITS LATEST INCARNATION  

PART-1: EXAMPLE MEDIA STORY ABOUT VERKHOYANSK TEMPERATURES

1. Verkhoyansk hits a temperatures of minus 67.7C but this year, on June 20, Verkhoyansk made headlines when that afternoon, temperatures reached plus 38C probably the hottest seen above the Arctic Circle since records began. You go out and within minutes you’re covered in sweat. Summers in Verkhoyansk are getting hotter every year. Russia’s meteorological service confirmed the Verkhoyansk weather record on June 30. This summer is nothing extraordinary in light of recent years, when July heat has regularly topped plus 30C.
2. Russia’s vast Sakha region, where the town lies, is accustomed to extreme temperatures that vary there more than anywhere else on the planet. In Verkhoyansk, the sun shines round the clock for weeks in the summer, and vanishes for months in winter. But for scientists analyzing the trend in Siberia, this year has been extraordinary.
3. The Copernicus Climate Change Service operates several satellites, said in a statement on July 7 that the Arctic has been warming substantially faster than the rest of the world. Parts of northeastern Siberia had broken the record for the two warmest Junes in 2018 and 2019 by 1C.  But June was not the only month to break temperature records. The first five months of 2020 were 5.3C above normal in Russia, according to Berkeley Earth, which calls it “the largest January-to-May temperature anomaly ever observed in any country’s national average.”
4. What is unusual in this case is that from December to May, long warmer-than-average anomalies have persisted according to Freja Vamborg, senior scientist at the Copernicus Climate Change Service. She cautioned against viewing Siberia as representative of a global trend, however. Western Siberia is a region that has high variability in temperature. Large temperature anomalies are not unexpected. Yet, the rapid pace of warming has stunned climate scientists. 
5. In the meantime, some of the apocalyptic warnings appear to be coming true. Raging wildfires are consuming swaths of forest in Sakha, which reported 183 active blazes across the region on July 5 and has deployed aviation to prevent them from engulfing villages and towns.
6. Vasily Yablokov, the head of the climate program at Greenpeace Russia, says the federal government is not doing enough to help prevent such catastrophes. “We’ve warned that more money is needed for the battle against wildfires but the fires are only the most visible problem. We also have more floods, droughts, and other obvious consequences of the changing climate.

PART-2: CRITICAL COMMENTARY

1. The analysis presented above and in all other works on Verkhoyansk June temperature articles found online assumes and promotes a causal connection between anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and extreme temperatures at Verkhoyansk in June of 2019 such that these alarming temperature shifts serve as motivation to take climate action in the form of reducing and eliminating fossil fuel emissions to attenuate the rate of warming and thereby avoid a climate change crisis implied by temperature extremes in Verkhoyansk.
2. Here we study the relationship between AGW and Verkhoyansk in terms of the global warming data shown graphically below in Part-3 of this post. The data there are from 1979 to 2020 for calendar months January to June and from 1979 to 2019 for the remaining calendar months. Lower troposphere temperature data are presented for four different regions of the globe. These are (1) GLOBAL, LAND AND OCEAN, (2) GLOBAL LAND ONLY, (3) NORTHERN EXTENT LAND ONLY, AND (4) NORTH POLAR REGION LAND ONLY. Three charts are provided for each region. These are, (1) Temperature, (2) Decadal warming rates, and (3) A comparison of the six calendar months.
3. The global temperatures provide the AGW context. Here we find nothing special about June in terms of temperature data. However, the more pertinent information is found in the decadal warming rates because the attribution of extreme heat in June to global warming implies a relatively high value of decadal warming rates for June in the decade ending in 2020. Here we find the decadal warming rates in June rising at the end of the time span into 2020 although a stronger rise in decadal warming is seen in the earlier months. In any case, this indication of a rising decadal warming rate in June in global mean temperature is then further investigated by restricting the surface to land and by looking at specific sections of the globe that relate to Verkhoyansk. We find as follows:
4. (a) When temperatures for global land surface only are studied, the steep rise in decadal warming rate in 2019 seen in global mean temperature is not found,  (b) and when the geographical extent is limited to land surface in the Northern Extent (northern hemisphere north of the tropics), and the North Polar region, the decadal warming curve goes completely flat for the calendar month of June.
5. These temperature data do not support the assumption by climate scientists and by the media that the Verkhoyansk extreme temperature event in June reported in the media are related to or can be understood in terms of AGW climate change. In fact, the data actually support the contrarian position expressed by Freja Vamborg who is a senior scientist at the Copernicus Climate Change Service. She cautioned against viewing Siberia as representative of a global trend. The data below support that view as they do not provide evidence that global warming had created a spike in warming in June of 2019 and 2020 such that the temperature extremes observed in Verkhoyansk at that time can be attributed to anthropogenic global warming.
6. It is noted that Verkhoyansk has a history of extreme temperature events both cold (in winter) and hot (in summer) and these events should be understood in terms of weather anomalies the region is known for and not in terms of anthropogenic global warming. It should also be mentioned that the temperature data used by the media to raise the Verkhoyansk climate crisis alarm was provided to them by the Copernicus Climate Change Service where Freja Vamborg, the Verkhoyansk climate crisis denier, is a climate scientist.
7. It should also me mentioned that there has been several research papers in the journals recently reporting the impossibility of assessing the impact of anthropogenic global warming at time brief time scales and limited geographical extent due to internal climate variability [LINK] . In terms of these limitations of AGW climate science, it is impossible to relate a one month temperature extreme event in a small geographical extent defined by the city of Verkhoyansk to anthropogenic global warming. 

PART-3: THE RELEVANT TEMPERATURE DATA

1. GLOBAL MEAN TEMPERATURE 1979-2020: LAND AND OCEAN   
2. DECADAL WARMING TRENDS: 
3. CALENDAR MONTHS COMPARED: 
4. GLOBAL MEAN TEMPERATURE 1979-2020: LAND ONLY 
5. DECADAL WARMING TRENDS: 
6. CALENDAR MONTHS COMPARED:
7. NORTHERN EXTENT TEMPERATURE 1979-2020: LAND ONLY 
8. DECADAL WARMING TRENDS: 
9. CALENDAR MONTHS COMPARED: 
10. NORTH POLAR TEMPERATURE 1979-2020: LAND ONLY : 
11. DECADAL WARMING TRENDS: 
12. CALENDAR MONTHS COMPARED: