In much of the United States, especially in the typically cold north, the country experiences winter without a winter.
Thermometers in Parka strongholds Burlington, Vermont and Portland, Maine Never fell below zero.Minnesota said the past three months “The Lost Winter” Warmer than the infamous “Neverwinter Year” of 1877-78.Michigan, where mosquitoes bite in February, offers disaster loan Businesses affected by lack of snow.Great Lakes Collection Winter low ice recordwith Erie and Ontario “Basically no ice.”
For most of the country from Colorado to New Jersey, from Texas to the Carolinas, The spring leaves have arrived That’s three to four weeks earlier than the average from 1991 to 2020, according to the National Phenology Network, which tracks plants, insects and other natural signs of the season.
“The combination of long-term warming and El Niño means there won’t be a winter in the U.S. this year,” said Jeff Masters, co-founder of the private company Weather Underground and a meteorologist at Yale University Climate Connections. Masters said he was bitten by a mosquito in Michigan this year, which he called crazy.
On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that The winter of 2023-2024 will be the warmest Nearly 130 years of record keeping in the United States. The Lower 48 average temperature was 37.6 degrees (3.1 degrees Celsius), 5.4 degrees (3 degrees Celsius) above average.
This is just the latest drumbeat Breaking temperature recordsnationally and globally, scientists say mainly from man-made climate change From the combustion of coal, oil and natural gas.
This has been the warmest winter in the United States. Karin Gleason, monitoring director for NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, said temperatures over the past three months were 0.82 degrees (0.46 degrees Celsius) warmer than the previous record set eight years ago. A big leap forward.”
Last month was only the third warmest February on record. Gleason said temperatures in Iowa were 2 degrees warmer than the hottest February temperatures, while parts of Minnesota were 20 degrees warmer than the average for all of February.
On February 11, the Great Lakes ice sheet hit February hit a record low of 2.7%.
A strong ridge of high pressure keeps the eastern United States warm and dry, while California is constantly buffeted by atmospheric rivers, she said.
European climate agency Copernicus said earlier this week it was The world’s warmest winterlargely due to climate change and further fueled by the natural El Niño phenomenon, which changes weather around the world and provides additional heat.
Over the past 45 years, U.S. winters have warmed faster than globally, with winters in the lower 48 states now averaging 2.2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) warmer than in 1980, according to an Associated Press analysis of NOAA data.
Gleason said this may be because land, which is mostly land in the United States, is warming faster than oceans, which are most of the world.
NOAA data shows that while temperatures in the United States are still warming, the rate of additional warming has slowed since 2000. Judah Cohen, a winter weather expert at Atmospheric Environmental Research, a commercial firm outside Boston, blames Arctic amplification, where climate change is warming three to four times more than the rest of the world and appears to be making weather The pattern shifts further south.
As the Arctic warms faster, the jet streams that drive weather systems around the planet become unstable and weaken. That means cold air trapped at the top of the planet, called a polar vortex, can break out of its normal confines and drift elsewhere, bringing brief cold air swoops that temporarily offset overall warming in some places, Cohen said. trend.
That happened briefly in January, when winter “just made a cameo appearance in the lower 48,” Cohen said. But he said that when the polar vortex lingers for most of this year, it brings blasts of icy air to Europe or Asia rather than the United States, so it has no offsetting effect on U.S. winter temperatures.
The temperature in Boston did not even reach single digits this year. The lowest temperature in winter was 14 degrees, setting a record without deep cold.
And snow? Forget it, at least in the east and north.
At Fort Kent in northern Maine, the annual sled dog race was canceled due to a lack of snow. The National Weather Service said the town had received 46.8 inches (119 centimeters) of snow this year as of last week, slightly more than half its normal amount.
The amount of snow cover in the United States in February was second lowest on record December was the third-lowest month, with only January above normal, according to the Rutgers University Snow Laboratory.
Theresa Crimmins, director of the National Phenology Network, said warmer winters will have consequences.
“Warmer winters may also lead to earlier, longer, and more abundant pest seasons because populations are not reduced by the cold,” Crimmins said in an email. “Additionally, allergy seasons may be worse — —starts earlier, lasts longer, and results in more pollen in the air.”
Trees and flowers may bloom earlier due to warmer weather.The cherry blossoms in Washington are Expected to peak two weeks early Compared to 2013. Early blooming can disrupt the complex timing of pollinators and birds.
“Many birds that migrate south during the winter use the length of the day as a cue to migrate north in the spring,” Crimmins said. “In years like this one, where plant and insect activity is cued much earlier than usual, Birds may miss the peak of food availability by arriving too late.”
But there’s some good news for California, Gleason said, as atmospheric rivers and snowstorms may rebuild the snowpack and fill reservoirs that were dangerously low just a few years ago.
Cohen, a winter weather expert who lives outside Boston, jokes that America no longer has four seasons: “We have two seasons. We have summer, we have November.”
___
Associated Press writer Patrick Whittle contributed from Portland, Maine.
___
Read more of AP’s climate coverage at:
___
Follow Seth Borenstein on X: @borenbears
___
AP’s climate and environment coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The Associated Press is solely responsible for all content. Find AP standard For working with charities, a list of supporters and funded coverage is at Associated Press.