Locally frigid, globally toasty

Posted 8/21/12

REGION — The global weather data for the month of February is in, and according to the National Climatic Data Center, February was an extraordinarily cold month in the northeast section of the …

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Locally frigid, globally toasty

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REGION — The global weather data for the month of February is in, and according to the National Climatic Data Center, February was an extraordinarily cold month in the northeast section of the United States. The region’s average temperature of 13.5° F was 12.7° F below normal. This made it the second-coldest February on record behind 1934, which had an average temperature of 12° F.

All 35 Northeast airport climate sites ranked the month among their top 20 coldest Februarys, with 15 of those sites having their coldest February on record. Twenty-six sites ranked this winter among their top 20 coldest winters.

Globally, the temperature was an entirely different story. The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for February 2015 was the second highest for February in the 136-year period of record, at 1.48°F above the 20th century average of 53.9°F. The warmest February occurred in 1998, which was 1.55°F above average. Nine of the past 12 months have been either warmest or second-warmest on record for their respective months.

Looking at the entire winter, which includes December through February, the temperatures in the Northeast, which includes New York and Pennsylvania, were below average.

Globally, however, during the three-month period, the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.42°F above the 20th century average. This was the highest for December–February in the 1880–2015 record, surpassing the previous record of 2007 by 0.05°F.

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