Story highlights NOAA official says the Arctic is changing faster than any region

Temperatures in Utqiaġvik are several degrees higher than they were two years ago

(CNN) Scientists say they aren't surprised, but climate change in the Northern Arctic is happening so quickly it's forcing NOAA and others to rewrite a data-correcting algorithm.

Climatology sites are very uniform and follow strict guidelines to prevent the data from being contaminated, and algorithms help remove outliers before that information gets to the final data set.

When checking November meteorological data from a site in Utqiaġvik, Alaska, scientists discovered their climate monitoring station had reported no data for the entire month.

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Upon closer inspection, they realized an algorithm had removed all the data from that Arctic site for the month of November; it simply thought it was an outlier.

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