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European Temperatures Winter 2004/2005

Averaged across Europe, winter 2004/2005 had temperatures 0.7 C above the 1961-90 average with December and January warmer than average while February was colder than average. Northern Europe including the UK had a mild winter while Iberia had a cold winter but neither positive nor negative anomalies for the whole winter were extreme. However, Helsinki had large positive anomalies in both December & January (+3.7 & +5.8 C) while Valladolid had a large negative anomaly in February (-2.8 C). South-east Europe had a prolonged and notable cold spell from late January to mid-March 2005: see this link and click on sites in the Balkans to see this.


Winter 2004/2005	Mean Temperature Anomaly C from 1961-90 average

Station	December	January	February	Winter
____________________________________________________________
Valentia, Ireland	0.0	+1.6	+0.1	+0.6
Aberdeen, Scotland, UK	+1.4	+2.7	+1.1	+1.7
Nantes, France	-0.6	+2.0	-1.6	-0.1
Valladolid, Spain	0.0	-1.8	-2.8	-1.5
De Bilt, Netherlands	+0.1	+2.2	-0.1	+0.7
Geneva, Switzerland	+1.1	+0.6	-1.6	0.0
Wien, Austria	+0.4	+2.6	-2.1	+0.3
Helsinki, Finland	+3.7	+5.8	-	-
Wroclaw, Poland	+1.9	+4.4	-0.7	+1.9
Athens, Greece	+1.1	+0.7	-1.0	+0.3

Mean	+0.9	+2.1	- 1.0	+0.7^*
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^*Average of three monthly European means - average of 9 site means is +0.43 C - Helsinki was anomalously warm in December & January and excluding these data (owing to no data in February) lowers the mean

The graph below compares the average winter temperature anomaly of these ten European stations with the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) from 1900 to 2005. The ranking of winter 2005 is 37th warmest since 1900 (taking the warmer +0.7 C value which includes Helsinki data) putting this winter on the mild side but not remarkably so. And the modest positive anomaly corresponds with the modestly positive value of the NAO during the winter. Clearly the trend to lower NAO compared with the 1990s has continued in 2005 and this is even more obvious if you look at January to March data (graph here).

Figure 1 Relationship between mean winter European temperature anomaly from 1961-90 average (defined in Table above) and the winter (Dec-Feb) NAO 1900-2005 (r = 0.645; P<0.001)