MAIN WEATHER AND CLIMATE TRAITS IN THE NORTHEN HEMISPHERE AS OF MARCH 2020
Air Temperature
March in Russia has always been considered a cold month. Indeed, frosts below -10° in the European territory and below -20° in the Asian territory have been commonplace in March for a long time. Yet the air temperature in March has remarkably increased over the recent years, and the events of unprecedented warmth started to follow one another at a high rate. Thus, March 2017 became the warmest in the history of meteorological observations in the country while March 2019, the third warmest in the ranking list. Extremely warm winter of the last year naturally suggested that this tendency would persist. But what happened in reality surpassed all expectations: the average temperature in each decade of the month exceeded the normal value by 8° to 12° or more in various regions. No territories exhibited sub-normal temperatures with the exception of some far north-eastern locations in the first decade. Eventually, the monthly-averaged temperature in most of the country turned out to be 6-8° or more degrees higher than usual. New maxima of air temperature were recorded in the north-west and centre of the country, in the Volga Region and in the Northern Caucasus, in the Crimea, Siberia, Yakutia, Kamchatka and Chukotka. March 2020 became the warmest in the history of meteorological observations in the ETR and in the Volga and South Federal Districts in particular, the third warmest one in the Asian territory, and the second warmest in Russia as a whole – outranked by March 2017 only. The monthly-averaged temperatures in all federal districts entered the Top Ten of highest values in the meteorological chronicle.
Abnormally warm weather occupied all of East Asia as well. The monthly-averaged air temperatures were 3-6° higher than normal in Mongolia, and 2-4° higher in China where their value averaged over the whole country was the fifth highest in the history of meteorological observations. This March was the second warmest in Hong Kong.
MAIN WEATHER AND CLIMATE TRAITS IN THE NORTHEN HEMISPHERE AS OF FEBRUARY 2020
Air Temperature
Alongside the other months of this winter, the air temperature in February in most part of Russia remained above-normal. From the first days of February to the end of the month, new record-breaking temperatures were reported in many regions, e.g., in Siberia, Yakutia and Trans-Baikal, as well as in the central, north-west, polar and southern territories of Russia. The average air temperatures in each of the three decades exceeded the normal values by 6-15° or more in most of the country. In Taimyr, the anomaly in the third decade reached 16-17°. In Khatanga, the daily-averaged temperature was almost 25° above the normal value on February 25.
The north-west was the only part of the country to resist this unprecedented inrush of heat. There, the weather was remarkably colder than usual in the first decade, e.g., by 5-10° or more in Chukotka, but the decade-averaged anomalies became close to normal later on.
In any case, February in Kamchatka, Kolyma and Chukotka was colder than normal on the average (by 2-4° or more in some places), but the rest of Russia was obsessed by fantastic heat, with the monthly-averaged temperatures exceeding the normal value by 10-12° or more in Siberia and in the Urals, and by 4-8° or more elsewhere in the European and in the Asian parts of the country alike.