The winter of 2014-15 was the warmest on record worldwide, according to the state of the climate report released by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Wednesday.
The winter (defined by NOAA as the months of December, January and February) was 1.42 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average, just a touch above the previous warmest winter which occurred in 2007. December 2014 was the warmest December on record, while January and February 2015 were the second warmest winter months on record.
It was the warmest winter ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere. Exceptionally high temperatures were recorded in the Western USA, central Asia, the central and southwest Pacific Ocean, Southern Europe, Greenland, Madagascar, Brazil and the southwestern Atlantic Ocean, and especially the western Atlantic off the eastern coast of the United States and Canada.
Only a few areas on the globe saw temperatures below their 20th average. These include New England and the east coast of the USA, part of the Atlantic Ocean southeast of Greenland, and parts of the southeastern Pacific Ocean.
Unfortunately the weather station and satellite data used by NOAA to construct their global temperature map do not cover high latitudes in either the northern or southern hemisphere, but here in Alaska we had an exceptionally warm winter, with the Iditarod dog sled being forced to shift the race course from south-central to central Alaska in order to find enough snow for the dog sleds to run.
All indications are that the record warmth seen in 2014 is continuing, and a new record for global temperatures may well be set in 2015 as well.
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