It was short weather for Santa as parts of Iceland set record high temperatures last Christmas Eve. Air that originated in the tropics swept across the country, helping temperatures in places soar to nearly 70 degrees on December 24.
Seyðisfjörður, on Iceland’s east coast, hit a record high of 19.8 degrees Celsius (about 67.6 degrees Fahrenheit) on the day before Christmas, The Guardian reported. It broke the previous record for Iceland, set on December 2, 2019, when the high reached 19.7 Celsius (about 67.5 Fahrenheit) in Öræfi, about 125 miles southwest of Seyðisfjörður, as the crow flies.
“This is incredibly warm for winter,” meteorologist Einar Sveinbjörnsson posted on Facebook, according to RÚV, Iceland’s national public broadcasting service. “Another station in Seyðisfjörður, located north of the head of the fjord in Vestdalur, recorded 19.4 C [about 66.9 F]. There is no reason to doubt this measurement.”
A “foehn wind” contributed to the unusual holiday heat records in Iceland, explained RÚV. “Foehn winds represent a special type of local wind associated with mountain systems,” the National Weather Service explains in an online publication. “In most mountainous areas, local winds are observed blowing over the mountain ranges and down the slopes on the leeward side. If the wind flowing down is hot and dry, it is called a foehn wind.”
While a foehn wind played a part in setting a new record high for December 24 in Iceland, a warming climate in high northern latitudes is making it easier to break records.
Records fell in Iceland this past spring as well, as temperatures in some areas rose as much as 3 to 4 degrees Celsius (between 5 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal in May, according to The Guardian. The temperature peaked at 26.6 Celsius (about 79.9 Fahrenheit) at Egilsstaðir airport in East Iceland on May 15.
Individual temperature records are not only proof of historical trends, but the scientific consensus holds that human activities have raised average temperatures around the world – and continue to do so. The effects of this warming include amplified extreme weather events that can endanger lives and livelihoods.
Only part of Iceland is north of the Arctic Circle, but our warming planet is also having a major impact on the Arctic, with effects spreading to other parts of the world. Scientists say the region is warming rapidly compared to the rest of the planet.
“In recent decades, warming in the Arctic has been much faster than in the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification,” concluded a 2022 study on the warming observed in the Arctic since 1979.
“A number of studies report that the Arctic is warming either twice, more than twice, or even three times as fast as the world on average,” added the authors of that research. “[We] shows, using several observational datasets covering the Arctic region, that over the last 43 years the Arctic has been warming almost four times faster than the earth, which is a higher ratio than generally reported in the literature.”
According to the US National Centers for Environmental Information’s November global climate report, the Arctic had its fifth warmest November on record, with temperatures more than 6 degrees Fahrenheit above average. At just over 5 degrees Fahrenheit above average, the period from January to November was the second warmest such period on record for the region.
NOAA’s 2025 Arctic report highlighted several ways our warming world is impacting the region, including “melting permafrost influencing river chemistry, northward transport of ocean heat reshaping Arctic marine ecosystems, and widespread warming leading to borealization of waters and landscapes of the Arctic.”
“Transformations over the next two decades will reshape Arctic environments and ecosystems, impact the well-being of Arctic residents, and influence the trajectory of the global climate system itself, on which we all depend,” warned the report’s authors.
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