Where the cold was in February

[Ann]

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I found this map of the temperatures of the world on the homepage of the Swedish Meteorological Institute.

Where was the cold in Feburary? You got it. Here, where I live. Shudder!!! It was cold. Okay - southern Sweden just barely escaped the really icy cold of the European continent.

The map doesn't say if the global temperatures where above or below average in February, but I note that more and larger areas are red rather than blue.

Ann

[orin stepanek]

But Ann; you said you liked blue! Ahh; well, I don't like the cold either!

[Chris Peterson]

Where was the cold in Feburary? You got it. Here, where I live. Shudder!!! It was cold. Okay - southern Sweden just barely escaped the really icy cold of the European continent.

The map seems to argue that temperatures where you live (and likewise for me) were very close to typical. My perception was that our February was colder than usual, but my weather station data doesn't back that up. I think the perception stems from the fact that it was windier than usual, which of course makes the cold feel much more intense. Perhaps in your case it was also no colder than usual, but it seemed so because of the intense cold not far south of you, and perhaps an overabundance of grayness?

The map doesn't say if the global temperatures where above or below average in February, but I note that more and larger areas are red rather than blue.

It certainly shows the same thing that current models show for northern winters: a significant arctic warming combined with significant European cooling.

[Beyond]

When i moved into where i am now about 33 years ago, i could count on at least a few days of -30' F. But since then, the winters have gotten warmer. Now it's rather uncommon to get as low as 0' F. One year about the middle of the last decade, the tempreture seemed to have gotten stuck at about 20' F for most of the winter. Of course this is all offset by the summer tempretures. Used to be before i got an air conditioner that i could count on lots of 90' F days, sometimes up to 6 or 7 days in a row, and a few days a little over 100' F. And the grass would burn up for a couple of months in the summer. Now i hardly ever see 90' F, and i mowed the lawn from may to november, between all the rain that came down.
So from my point of view.... The winters are warmer, the summers are cooler and there's more rain year-round. So IF this is global warming.... YEA!!

[Ann]

Chris wrote:
Perhaps in your case it was also no colder than usual, but it seemed so because of the intense cold not far south of you, and perhaps an overabundance of grayness?

Actually February was sunnier than usual, but the temperature variations were extreme. Since you read Danish, I'm adding a link to this page from the Danish Meteorological Institute. You can see that the lowest temperature in Denmark in February 2012 was -23.1 degrees Celsius, the coldest February temperature in Denmark in 27 years. But the highest temperature in Denmark in February 2012 was 15.1 degrees Celsius, the third highest February temperature in Denmark ever. A few days ago I saw a link, which I can't find now, which said that the temperature variation in Denmark in February 2012 was the eighth greatest ever for any month ever recorded in Denmark.

February as a whole was very slightly colder than what is "normal", which is calculated from recorded temperatures in Denmark between 1961 and 1990.

I must add that Skåne, where I live, is slightly colder than Denmark. I also think we got a bit less sunshine than they did in Denmark. For all of that, and in view of the fact that it was February, it was rather sunny.

Ann

EDIT: I found the link about temperature variations in Denmark in a single month. Here it is.

[Beyond]

Ann, when i clicked on your 'Danish' link, i got WIeND when i applied my Bing translator. No weather reports, but could be some interesting 'adult' stuff. It was also auto-German detected, not danish. Seems to be something crossed up somewhere. Either that, or Bing likes this page.

EDIT: I just tried it again. This time it came up differently and i had to put the url in. I got the weather report.

Seems like the same thing happened last time i used Bing on one of your links. IF the same German page pops up next time i use it, i'll have to apply Thor's hammer to it. THAT ought to get rid of it

[Ann]

Don't like Bing myself. I'm a Google gal!

Ann

[Chris Peterson]

Actually February was sunnier than usual, but the temperature variations were extreme...

Ah. Not something that is apparent in a single mean value. A clever data presenter might figure out a nice way to present the variation graphically- maybe just plotting a variance or standard deviation would do. In any case, it would be interesting to see that for a wide geographical area.