The United Nations officially recognized Tuesday the 38°C measured in Siberia in 2020 as a new record high for the arctic, prompting the agency to sound "alarm bells" over climate change.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that the tropical-like heat was recorded in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk in June 2020, recording the highest temperature ever above the Arctic circle of latitude.

The UN agency said this was the first time it had added record Arctic heat to its archive of extreme weather reports. This comes as the world is hit by an unprecedented wave of record temperature spikes, which have caused droughts, mega-fires, health issues, and exacerbated displacement and poverty.

"This new Arctic record is one of a series of observations reported to the WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes that sound the alarm bells about our changing climate," WMO Chief Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

This record is unprecedented over the 135-year period during which temperatures in Verkhoyansk have been measured.

The temperature was measured at a meteorological station during an exceptionally prolonged Siberian heatwave, the agency reported. It was "more befitting the Mediterranean than the Arctic," WMO asserted.

The average temperatures across Arctic Siberia reached up to 10°C above normal for the majority of the summer last year, it said, which fuelled fires and massive sea-ice loss.

Last year also saw a new record high of 18.3°C for the Antarctic continent, Taalas said. 

The WMO is still seeking to verify the 54.4°C recorded in both 2020 and 2021 in the world's hottest place, California's Death Valley.

And its experts are also working on validating a new European temperature record of 48.8°C reported on the Italian island of Sicily this past summer.

The WMO's archive "has never had so many ongoing simultaneous investigations", its chief declared.