For the
sake of statistics, since the recent month will not become a part of the tenth
edition of the renowned winter timeline:
-
month-time high: +16.5C on 4 November 2019 (almost 3 degrees below last year’s
record of November heat)
-
month-time low: –4.7C on 1 November 2019 (was a frosty night, followed by
nearly 3 weeks of above-average warmth),
- the
warmest day: 4 November 2019 (daily average of +13.5C, typical late September’s
weather, though windy),
- the
coldest day: 23 November 2019 (daily average of –0.2C, technically a one-day
thermal winter).
Also for
the record, several trees, including birches, poplars, maples and willows have
not shed their all leaves.
If you look
at the graph showing average temperatures of Novembers in Warsaw in 21st
century against long-term average, you can see only 4 out of 19 Novembers were
below the average, therein 3 less than 1 Celsius degree below it. For the sake
of clarity, in Polish climatology, the average temperature is based on recent
finished full three decades, hence the frame of 1981-2010 currently serves as
basis for what could be considered “normal”.
Another
graph compares mean temperatures of specific months in 2019 against long-term
average. As it turns out , May was the only month this year with temperature
below average (by 0.5C degree), while January and July were just above the
average (respectively by 0.1C and 0.2C degree). 2019 is bound to go down as the
warmest year in Poland since records began…
…And will
beat the record set by 2018, when only February and March brought below-average
temperatures, while other months were substantially warmer than historically, including
especially two spring months the warmest since records began: April 2018 (mean
temperature of +13.6C, beating the record of +13.5C from April 1918) and May
2018 (mean temperature of +18.2C, above May 1937 when temperature averaged out
+17.8C).
While CEE
countries experienced a balmy late autumn, the Western part of Europe was shivering
(for around two weeks temperature in Warsaw was constantly higher than in
Madrid), Venice was plagued by the most horrible flood since decades, snow fell
in mountain areas of North Africa and northern Scandinavia experienced the
heaviest early-November snow (nearly one metre) since 1922. The bill for our
warmth was paid in other parts of the planet; unsurprisingly, since the global
warming exacerbates imbalances in the atmosphere and conceivably in a year or
two we might be hit by an onslaught of winter in mid-November.
I also
wondered how switching to a refreshed long-term average in 2021, i.e. replacing
1981-2010 with 1991-2020 timeframe would impact “normal” mean temperatures and
here comes the comparison (with averages based on 1991-2019 data). The green
spots referring to the right axis show the temperature increase. Sadly, the
biggest warming is observed in summer months (June and August) when heat is the
hardest to withstand and through energy-consuming use of cooling systems
intensifies the process of warming. Besides, many colder months have become on
average milder, i.e. November, February and December. Interestingly, average
temperature of October would rise by merely 0.1 degree and this is despite the
string of 3 warm Octobers since 2017.
While
around autumn the oncoming winter was predicted to be the mildest ever, in the
recent (issued a week ago or so) long-term forecast of the Polish Met Office
only December 2019 is to be warm. Polish forecasters predict January 2020 and
February 2020 will bring proper winter, including snow and double-digit frosts,
while mean temperature of March 2020 will be close to long-term average.
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