MOSCOW, March 2. /TASS/. The outgoing winter, which ended a couple of days ago according to the calendar, has proved the warmest in the history of weather monitoring in Russia conducted since 1891, the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring said on Monday.
Over the past winter the average air temperatures in almost all Russian regions were two degrees above the norm as a minimum; on some territories it was even warmer. The past winter proved particularly mild in the Central, Northwest, Siberian and the Far Eastern Federal Districts, where seasonal air temperatures were 4-7 degrees above the norm.
The 2014-2015 winter beat a record earlier set by the 1962 winter by 0.5 degrees. The past winter was one of the four warmest winters in Moscow’s history, ranking fourth after almost equally warm winters registered in 1961, 1989 and 2008.
The mild winter in Russia was a result of being centered in a zone of abnormal warm weather that set in on the whole territory of Eurasia, in the west of North America, starting from Alaska to Mexico, and spreading to the central Atlantic area. It was warm whirls of wind from the Atlantic area that made the past winter in Russia particularly mild.
But, the east of the United States and Canada , the northwestern area of Africa and some territories in India suffered from a spell of winter cold last year, although a gap between abnormally low and normal air temperatures on these territories was essentially lower than on the territories where the last winter was mild.
A general conclusion was that the 2014-2015 winter was the warmest in the Northern Hemisphere in the history story of weather monitoring, The average air temperatures last winter were higher than the previous" warm" record set in 2006-2007.