Despite the Deep Freeze on the US East Coast, This Winter Was the Hottest on Record

It may not make shivering Northeasterners feel any better, but their miserable winter wasn't shared by the rest of the planet.

The three-month stretch from December through February was the warmest on record, the US National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported this week. Average global temperatures were 0.79 degrees Celsius (1.42 Fahrenheit) above the 20th century average, the highest mark since record keeping began in 1880. February's average alone was 0.82 degrees Celsius (1.48 Fahrenheit) above the last century's benchmark, the second highest on record for the month.

While the heavy snowfalls on the US East Coast and even parts of the South got a lot of attention this winter, the American West, Europe, and most of Russia had a warmer-than-average winter. Parts of Siberia saw average temperatures five degrees Celsius (nine Fahrenheit) above normal.

"I had a meeting over in London — it was in mid-February — and people there were saying, 'Oh, what a nice, early spring,' " Donald Wuebbles, a University of Illinois atmospheric science professor and co-author of last year's National Climate Report, told VICE News.

The latest figures "are a nice indication that things are continuing to happen," Wuebbles said. But he added: "It's only one indicator of the many things happening in the Earth's climate system that we expect to continue."Scientists expect that the increasing global temperatures — up an average of about 0.8 degree Celsius (1.4 Fahrenheit) since 1880, and forecast to rise at least two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) by 2100 — will bring more extreme storms and droughts and an increase in global sea levels, with consequences falling disproportionately on the world's poor.

"We're seeing an ever-increasing tendency toward more severe weather," Wuebbles said. "We're getting more severe precipitation ... That's the real harm — that, and sea-level rise."

A long-awaited but weak El Nino, the periodic wave of Pacific Ocean warmth, finally emerged in February. That may bring some hope of rainfall to drought-wracked California, where officials announced new water restrictions this week after a disappointingly dry winter.

But a warmer ocean could also mean more intense tropical cyclones like the one that smashed into the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu this month. Scientists say they can't hang any specific storm on climate change — but warmer temperatures load the dice toward more extreme events.

And after global temperatures edged out a previous high to make 2014 the warmest year on record, the first two months of 2015 were also the warmest January-February period on the books. While the Great Lakes, northeastern Canada and the far northern Atlantic saw record lows, record highs stood out across the western US, the western Atlantic Ocean, and southwestern Pacific.

https://news.vice.com/article/despite-the-deep-freeze-on-the-us-east-coast-this-winter-was-the-hottest-on-record