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Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, sits on the southwestern coast of the island near the mouth of the great Nuuk Kangerlua fjord, just below the Arctic Circle at approximately 64.18°N, 51.72°W. It has a polar tundra climate (Köppen ET) — cold, cloudy and windy — with short cool summers and long freezing winters, moderated by the sea and by the warm influence of the North Atlantic current.
Summer, from June to August, is short and cold rather than warm, with July the warmest month — average highs of only around 10°C and mean temperatures near 6°C. Genuinely warm days are rare, though the sun barely sets at midsummer. Overcast and foggy conditions are frequent in the fjord, and icebergs are often visible drifting past the city even in the mildest month.
Winter, from December to March, is long, freezing, snowy and windy, with monthly means around -7°C and lows well below that during cold spells. Remarkably, this is far milder than places at the same latitude in Arctic Canada, where winter means can reach -27°C — the North Atlantic current warms Greenland's western coast. The fjord itself does not freeze, though Nuuk's harbour can develop sea ice up to 30 cm thick.
Nuuk receives on the order of 750–850 mm of precipitation a year, falling on around 120–160 days, much of it as snow in the long cold season, with September typically the wettest month; the coastal precipitation helps replenish the vast inland ice cap. Live rainfall, humidity, and pressure readings for the city are shown in the panels above.
Nuuk is famously cloudy and foggy — Greenlanders joke that the capital is always grey — with fog rolling in and out of the fjord so quickly that it regularly delays flights. Its winters are strikingly mild for the latitude thanks to the warm North Atlantic current, and icebergs calved from the ice sheet drift past the city throughout the year.
To follow any single measurement in Nuuk more closely, use our live instruments: the online barometer for atmospheric pressure, the thermometer for temperature, the hygrometer for humidity, the anemometer for wind speed, the wind vane for wind direction, and the rain gauge for rainfall.