According to a new assessment on the Nordic nation’s climate change released Tuesday, Sweden’s average temperature has grown by almost two degrees Celsius since the late 1800s, and despite an increase in precipitation, the length of the snow cover has decreased by two weeks.
The average temperature in the nation increased by 1.9 degrees Celsius (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) between 1991 and 2020 compared to the years between 1861 and 1890, according to a report from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI).
The observed change, according to SMHI, was roughly twice as large as the change in the world’s average temperatures during the same time period.
The weather agency said that it had not previously conducted an analysis as extensive, where it looked at as many different indicators of climate change, before.
“The result of the analysis clearly show that Sweden’s climate has changed,” Semjon Schimanke, climatologist and project leader at SMHI, said in a statement.
“The warmer climate with more precipitation in Sweden closely follows the observed global warming that is a result of human climate influence,” Erik Kjellstrom, professor of climatology at SMHI, added.
Not all of the observation series covered the same timeframe, the weather agency said and noted that precipitation had increased since 1930, from about 600 millimeters to almost 700 millimetres from the year 2000 and forward.
However, the snow cover during winter around the country had decreased by 16 days on average for the period between 1991 and 2020 compared to the period between 1961 and 1990.
SMHI stressed that the observations were the averages over a year, and said the picture became more complex as when “investigating smaller regions or different seasons.”
