European Temperatures Winter 2002/2003

European Temperatures Winter 2002/2003

The European average discussed in this article is part of a long term study, The 1990s: the warmest decade of the twentieth century?

The Table below shows that during winter 2002/2003, temperatures were above average in western Europe and below average in eastern Europe. Averaged over the ten stations, both December and January were slightly above average whereas February was 1.3 C below the 1961-90 average. In Athens, February 2003 was the coldest since 1891 with an anomaly of -3.8 C. In contrast, temperatures in Geneva were 3.8 C above average in December 2002 which was the warmest since 1915.

Winter 2002/2003 Mean Temperature Anomaly C from 1961-90 average

Station December January February Winter

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Valentia, Ireland +0.6 +0.2 - -

Aberdeen, Scotland, UK +1.8 +1.4 +0.5 +1.3

Nantes, France +2.9 -0.9 -0.5 +0.5

Valladolid, Spain +3.0 +0.3 -1.4 +0.6

De Bilt, Netherlands -0.2 +0.4 -0.8 -0.1

Geneva, Switzerland +3.8 +0.9 -1.8 +2.5

Wien, Austria -1.3 +0.4 -2.9 -1.2

Helsinki, Finland -3.9 -2.8 +1.2 -1.9

Wroclaw, Poland -2.8 +0.9 -2.1 -1.4

Athens, Greece -0.5 +3.1 -3.8 -0.5

Mean +0.3 +0.4 -1.3 +0.0

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This graph compares the average winter temperature anomaly of these ten Europe stations with the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) from 1900 to 2003. The main points to note are:

winter 2002/2003 was the coldest since 1995/1996

winter 2002/2003 is ranked as 32nd coldest in the 104 year period 1900-2003

the correlation between the mean winter Europe temperature anomaly and the winter NAO is very high (r = 0.662) and significant at the 0.1% level.

This graph compares the average annual temperature anomaly of these ten Europe stations from 1900 to 2002 with NAO in the preceding winter and also shows a very strong correlation (r = 0.538) which is significant at the 0.1% level.

The regression equation is: annual European temperature anomaly = -0.0206 + 0.0762 winter NAO

Using this equation, the predicted annual European temperature anomaly for 2003 is -0.18 C from the 1961-90 average.