Believe it or not, winter was warm

March 27, 2010|Associated Press

WASHINGTON — It will probably come as a surprise to most Americans, but the winter just finished was the fifth-warmest on record, worldwide.

Sure, nearly two-thirds of the country can dispute that from personal experience of a colder-than-normal season.

But while much of the United States was colder than usual, December-February — climatological winter — continued the long string of unusual warmth on a global basis.

And parts of the United States did join in, with warmer-than-normal readings for the season in New England and the Pacific Northwest. Indeed, Maine had its third-warmest winter on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports.

NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports that worldwide the average temperature for winter was 54.9 degrees Fahrenheit.

That’s 1.08 degrees above average for the three-month period.

Contributing to the warmth was an El Niño, a periodic warming of water in the tropical Pacific Ocean, which can influence weather over large areas.

However, worldwide temperatures have also been climbing in recent years, a warming attributed by most atmospheric scientists to chemicals added to the air by human activities since the start of the Industrial Revolution.