MAIN WEATHER AND CLIMATE TRAITS IN THE NORTHEN HEMISPHERE AS OF APRIL 2023
Air temperature
This April in the ETR may be considered relatively warm: it was among the fifteen warmest ones in 133 years of regular meteorological observations. The monthly-averaged temperature in most of the ETR was 2-3° higher than normal during the whole month and up to 5° higher in the first and third decades. New daily maxima were recorded in the centre and in the Russian North. At the same time, the colds broke far to the south on individual days, with frosts down to -4° amid the blossom of fruit trees and shrubs in the Volgograd and Astrakhan Regions as well as in the Stavropol Territory.
The weather in the Urals and in Siberia was entirely different: the record-breaking colds were observed there, and new daily temperature minima were set in the Krasnoyarsk and Altai Territories, in the Republic of Altai and in the Baikal region. The temperature averages were 5-10° lower than normal in the first and second decades of the month, and the warmth in the third decade came to the north only, with the south still under the spell of abnormal colds. The monthly-averaged air temperature in the Siberian Federal District was 2.6° below the normal value.
MAIN WEATHER AND CLIMATE TRAITS IN THE NORTHEN HEMISPHERE AS OF MARCH 2023
Air temperature
Abnormally cold weather that settled along the coast of the Arctic Ocean in northern Russia at the end of February enhanced its freezing strength at the beginning of March. In the first decade of the month, the anomalies of decade-averaged air temperatures from the Kola Peninsula to Chukotka amounted to -2…-8°, and new daily temperature minima reaching -45° were recorded in a number of locations, or -50° in the Magadan Region. In the rest of Russia, March started with abnormally warm weather accompanied by new daily temperature maxima in the Middle and Lower Volga, in the south of the ETR, of Yakutia and of the Far East.
In the second decade, heat intensified and drove away anomalous colds from almost all the Arctic region: instead, the records of warmth were now set over there, – as well as in the Volga region, Yakutia, the Far East and the Trans-Baikal where they continued to occur since the previous decade.
In the third decade, cold weather in the Kola Peninsula, in the north of Taimyr and partly in Kolyma and Chukotka regained its positions to some extent, but the rest of the country remained under the spell of anomalous heat. New daily temperature maxima were still recorded in the Middle and Lower Volga and in the south of the Far East, and now the Urals and Siberia joined the list.
However, March ended up with frosts in the south of the ETR.