MOSCOW, March 5. /TASS/. The 2017-2018 winter season has made it into the top three warmest winters on record both in Russia and the entire Northern Hemisphere, Russia’s Federal Service for Hydrometeorology said in a statement published on its website.

"Only the winters of 2015 and 2016 were warmer. It is mostly a result of the very warm beginning of the winter season (since December 2017 made it into the top five warmest Decembers on record)," the statement reads. "In most of the country, temperatures were two degrees higher than average, while temperatures recorded in the Arctic region turned out to be four to eight degrees higher than the norm. Only in southwestern Siberia (particularly in the Novosibirsk and Altai Regions) winter 2018 was colder than usual, but not by much," the document adds.

The Hydrometeorology Service also said that as far as the Northern Hemisphere was concerned, this winter was colder than average only in the southeastern parts of the Atlantic Ocean, including the African coast, as well as in Kazakhstan, Korea, southern Japan and the equatorial part of the Pacific Ocean.