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November 7, 2026

Findivoza

Science & Health

40°C in the Nordics? New study says it is no longer out of the question

Faizan Altaf

For a long time, 40 degrees Celsius sounded like a temperature that belonged somewhere else, not in Norway, Sweden or Finland, where summer is short and most homes were built to keep the cold out, not the heat.

A new study published on 31 October 2026 says that picture is now out of date. Researchers at the Finnish Meteorological Institute found that 40°C is no longer an impossible temperature for the Nordic countries. It is unlikely in any single year, but it is possible, and it has become much more likely than it was a generation ago. That does not mean 40°C is about to arrive next summer. It means planners, hospitals, builders and families in the north should stop treating such heat as something that simply cannot happen there.

At a glance

What happened: A study published on 31 October 2026 in the journal npj Natural Hazards found that temperatures of 40°C can no longer be ruled out in Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Why it matters: The chance of 40°C somewhere in the Nordic countries is now about 0.53% in any given year, roughly six times higher than in 1981, and the chance of breaking a national heat record in Norway is already about 10.9% a year.

What happens next: The researchers say Nordic countries should prepare for hotter peaks than their records suggest, with heat warnings, cooling in care homes and hospitals, and building rules designed for warmth as well as cold.

What the new study found

The study, titled “40 °C heat extremes are no longer implausible in the Nordic countries”, was written by five researchers at the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki: Mika Rantanen, Otto Hyvärinen, Mikko Laapas, Kirsti Jylhä and Anna Luomaranta. It was published on 31 October 2026 in npj Natural Hazards, a peer-reviewed journal in the Nature group.

Its headline result is a probability. The researchers estimate the chance of the temperature reaching 40°C somewhere in Norway, Sweden or Finland at 0.53% in a year under 2025 conditions, or roughly one year in 190. The study gives a range of 0.38% to 0.70%, reflecting the uncertainty in the calculation. That may sound small, and in one sense it is: in most years, 40°C will not happen. But the researchers stress the change over time. The same chance was about six times lower in 1981.

The study also asked how likely it is that one of the three countries breaks its own all-time heat record. For Norway, the chance was the highest: 10.9% a year under present-day conditions, or roughly one year in nine, because its record is the lowest of the three. The authors’ conclusion is plain: the Nordic countries should prepare for much higher peak temperatures than the historical record alone would suggest.

How the researchers worked it out

The problem the researchers faced is familiar in climate science. Weather records only show what has actually happened. If a temperature has never been measured, the records cannot say whether it is impossible or simply unlucky so far.

To get around that problem, the team turned to computer weather forecasts. They pooled all available forecasts from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ seasonal prediction system, giving them the equivalent of 7,308 simulated summers to study.

That is the key to the study. In 7,308 summers, rare events that have never shown up in the real record get a chance to appear. The researchers could count how often 40°C turned up in those simulated summers, and how often national records were broken, and turn those counts into probabilities.

The method has limits, and the researchers do not hide them. Simulated summers are not real summers. They come from a forecasting model, and models are never perfect copies of the real atmosphere. That is one reason the study reports a range, from 0.38% to 0.70%, rather than a single precise figure. But the approach is widely used in climate science precisely because real records are too short to capture the rarest events.

Why 40 degrees is possible now

The study does not only give a probability. It also explains the kind of weather that would produce a 40°C day in the north. The answer is a combination of two things happening at the same time: a stuck weather pattern and dry ground.

The stuck pattern is called omega blocking, named after the shape of the Greek letter omega. A huge area of high pressure settles over northern Europe and stays there, pushing rain-bearing weather systems around it, while the air beneath it sinks, warms and dries out.

The second ingredient is low soil moisture. When the ground is dry, the sun’s energy goes into heating the air instead of evaporating water, which keeps the air cooler. Dry soil and a blocking high pressure system feed each other, and the researchers found that the most extreme simulated temperatures came when the two arrived together.

This combination is not new, but it is becoming more dangerous as the climate warms. The background temperature of the whole region has risen, so the same weather pattern now starts from a warmer place and ends at a higher peak. That is why the probability has risen six-fold since 1981. A 40°C day in Helsinki, Oslo or Stockholm would not be a freak accident from nowhere. It would be the result of a known pattern, made more dangerous by a warmer world, and the pattern gives forecasters something to watch for.

How close the Nordics have already come

None of the three countries has ever officially recorded 40°C. But the gap between their records and 40°C is now small, and in Sweden’s case it is only two degrees.

Sweden holds the highest national record of the three. Its hottest day ever recorded was 38°C at Målilla, in the south of the country, on 29 June 1947, a record shared with Ultuna, near Uppsala, where the same temperature was recorded on 9 July 1933. Sweden came close again with 37.2°C at Målilla on 21 July 2022, the hottest Swedish day since 1947.

Finland’s record is 37.2°C, measured at Joensuu Airport in Liperi on 29 July 2010, breaking the previous record of 35.9°C set in Turku in 1914.

Norway’s record is the lowest of the three: 35.6°C at Nesbyen on 20 June 1970. It stood untouched for 49 years until a weather station at Laksfors, near Mosjøen in the far north, recorded exactly 35.6°C again in July 2019. That is why the new study finds Norway the most likely of the three to break its record.

Two degrees in Sweden, not quite three in Finland, and just over four in Norway. Those are the gaps that remain. They are not large gaps, and the study’s point is that they are the kind of gaps a single exceptional summer can close.

The summers that warned us

The new study did not come out of nowhere. It landed at the end of a run of summers that have repeatedly pushed northern Europe into unfamiliar heat.

The most recent warning came in the summer of 2026 itself. The study’s own abstract notes that during the 2026 heatwave, temperatures of 40°C reached further north in Europe than previously observed. In late June 2026, national records fell in Denmark, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Belarus and Hungary, with temperatures from 37°C to 42°C. Between 21 and 28 June, average temperatures across much of Europe ran about 10°C above normal, and the World Meteorological Organization described the heatwave as extraordinary.

A year earlier, in July 2025, the heat struck the Nordic countries directly. Finland, Norway and Sweden endured about two weeks above 30°C, and Finland recorded 22 consecutive days above 30°C, the longest such run in its history. Hospitals were overcrowded and overheated, wildfires burned, and reindeer were seen seeking shade in towns.

A rapid study by the World Weather Attribution network found that human-caused climate change had made that heatwave about 2°C hotter and at least 10 times more likely. In today’s climate, with about 1.3°C of warming from burning fossil fuels, a two-week heatwave like that one would be expected roughly once every 50 years. The researchers also found that the chance of such a long hot spell had almost doubled since 2018. If warming reaches 2.6°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100, they said, Nordic heatwaves like the July 2025 one would become five times more likely than today and another 1.4°C hotter.

The summer before that, 2024, was the warmest summer in northern Fennoscandia in 2,000 years, according to a study by some of the same Finnish researchers, using weather station records and tree-ring evidence. It beat the previous record summer of 1937.

Put together, the pattern is hard to miss: a record-hot summer, a two-week heatwave made far more likely by climate change, and a continental heatwave that pushed 40°C further north than ever before. The new study is the next step. It asks what happens when those trends continue, and its answer is that 40°C in the Nordics moves from unthinkable to possible.

What 40 degrees would mean for people

A temperature of 40°C, or 104°F, is dangerous anywhere, but especially in a place that is not built for it.

Nordic homes are designed to keep heat in during long, dark winters. They are well insulated, but often poorly ventilated, and few have air conditioning. In the July 2025 heatwave, that combination turned homes, care facilities and hospitals into traps for heat. Maja Vahlberg, a climate consultant at the Swedish Red Cross, said the region’s infrastructure was not built to withstand such extreme temperatures, and its ageing population was increasingly vulnerable to dangerous heat.

Older people, young children and people with heart or breathing problems are the most at risk. The body cools itself by sweating, but that works less well with age and with some medicines, and it fails faster when nights stay warm and give the body no chance to recover.

The risks go beyond health. Heat buckles railway tracks, melts road surfaces and strains power grids, and dry, hot weather raises the risk of wildfires, which the region saw again in 2025. And in the far north, the heat threatens the livelihoods of Indigenous Sámi reindeer herders. Reindeer normally move to higher ground in summer to escape the heat, but researchers found that those areas now offer less relief, leaving the animals to overheat and struggle to find food and water.

None of this is a prediction that all of it will happen in a single summer. It is a list of the things that become more likely as peak temperatures rise, and the reason the researchers say preparation should start before the first 40°C day, not after it.

What happens next

The study does not say when 40°C will arrive: a 0.53% yearly chance means it could happen next summer, or not for two centuries. What it does say is that the old assumption, that the Nordic climate protects the region from such extremes, no longer holds.

Preparation starts with planning. Heat-health warning systems need to be ready for temperatures the region has never recorded. Hospitals and care homes need cooling plans, building rules written for cold winters need to be checked against hot summers, and cities need cool public spaces and drinking water points for people without air conditioning at home.

Because the study identifies the recipe for extreme heat, strong omega blocking plus dry soil, weather services can watch for that combination and warn earlier when it appears, giving hospitals time to prepare and families time to check on older relatives.

The longer-term answer is slowing the warming itself. The World Weather Attribution researchers said after the July 2025 heatwave that a rapid move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy is the only way to slow, and hopefully eventually stop, the warming.

For readers in Pakistan and South Asia, where 40°C is a familiar summer temperature rather than a record, the story carries a lesson that travels: the places that suffer most in extreme heat are often the places least used to it.

Frequently asked questions

Has it ever reached 40°C in Norway, Sweden or Finland?

No. The highest temperatures officially recorded are 38°C in Sweden, 37.2°C in Finland and 35.6°C in Norway. The new study says 40°C is possible, not that it has already happened.

How likely is 40°C in the Nordics?

The study estimates a 0.53% chance in any given year under 2025 conditions, roughly one year in 190, with a range of 0.38% to 0.70%. That chance is about six times higher than it was in 1981.

Why is the chance rising?

The climate has warmed, so the same weather patterns now produce higher temperatures. The study points to a combination of strong omega blocking, a stuck high-pressure system, and dry soil, which together push temperatures to their highest.

What is omega blocking?

It is a large, slow-moving area of high pressure that stays in one place for days or weeks, blocking rain-bearing weather systems and letting sunshine and heat build up underneath it. It is named after the shape of the Greek letter omega.

Which Nordic country is most likely to break its heat record first?

Norway, according to the study. Its national record of 35.6°C is the lowest of the three, and the researchers put the yearly chance of Norway passing it at about 10.9% under present-day conditions.

What should people in the Nordics do to prepare?

The researchers say countries should plan for hotter peaks than their records suggest. In practice that means heat warnings, cooling plans for hospitals and care homes, buildings designed for hot summers as well as cold winters, and cool public spaces for people without air conditioning at home.

Conclusion

A temperature of 40°C in Norway, Sweden or Finland still sounds extraordinary, and in one sense it is. It has never been recorded there, and in most years it will not happen. But the study published on 31 October 2026 shows that extraordinary is not the same as impossible.

The chance has risen six-fold since 1981. The gap between the highest temperatures ever recorded and 40°C is now two degrees in Sweden and less than three in Finland, and the summers of 2024, 2025 and 2026 have each pushed the region further into unfamiliar heat.

The study’s message is not that the north is about to become the Mediterranean. It is that the north can no longer count on its cool climate to protect it, and the sensible response is to prepare now, while 40°C is still a probability on a page.

This article is for general information and education only. It is not legal or financial advice.

Sources

Faizan Altaf

Faizan Altaf is the founder and author of findivoza.com, a news blog covering world, Pakistan, business, technology, health and sport in plain English. He writes for general readers who want clear, trustworthy news without jargon. His work focuses on explaining what happened, why it matters, and what to watch next.

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