MAIN WEATHER AND CLIMATE TRAITS IN THE NORTHEN HEMISPHERE AS OF FEBRUARY 2021
Air Temperature
Abnormally warm weather at the end of January in the ETR grew colder with the onset of the last month of winter. At the beginning, cooling spread solely to the North-West Federal District and to the northern regions of the Central one: there, the average air temperature in the first decade became close to normal or a bit lower than that, by some 1.0-1.5°. The weather in the south of the ETR and in the Cis-Urals was still so warm that numerous daily maxima of air temperature were updated at that time. Nevertheless, Arctic colds came there starting from the second decade, and the decade-averaged air temperatures dropped to -4…-13° below their normal values. Frosts reached as low as -35…-50° in the north including the Arkhangelsk and Murmansk Regions and the Komi Republic, and -40° or below in the south of the Urals. On February 22, a temperature of -51.3° was recorded in the Komi Republic: this was the first time since 2017 when the air temperature in Europe decreased below -50°. Unprecedented colds of -30…-35° were observed in the Moscow region. The temperature dropped to -15° in the Crimea, and a powerful fast ice was formed in the Kaliningrad Bay for the first time in the 21st century.
MAIN WEATHER AND CLIMATE TRAITS IN THE NORTHEN HEMISPHERE AS OF JANUARY 2021
Air Temperature
January 2021 was cold in Russia – primarily, in the Asian territory where it was among the 15 coldest ones in the entire history of regular meteorological observations in the country since 1891. The weather was abnormally warm in Taimyr, Evenkiya and the north-west of Yakutia in the first decade only, but generally remained cold everywhere from the Urals to the Pacific Ocean during all month, save for the south regions of the Altai and Primorye Territories, the Republic of Buryatia and the Altai Mountains. New temperature minima as low as -55…-60° were recorded in Altai, Chukotka, Yakutia, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, and the Omsk Region. The monthly-averaged air temperature hit the Top Ten of the lowest values in the history of meteorological observations in the north of the Far East, and the Top Twenty, in its south. The anomalies of this temperature reached or exceeded -2…-6° in the Urals and to the east of them.
The thermal footprints were quite different in the European territory of Russia: colder than usual in the second decade (with anomalies down to -4…-8°) but basically warmer in the first and third decades when the monthly-averaged temperatures were 6-8° higher than normal. New records of heat were set in the south of the ETR in the first decade, culminating in Sochi with a new absolute maximum air temperature of 22.4° never observed before in January. In the third decade, daily temperature maxima were recorded in many locations of the Central, North-East and Volga Federal Districts. As a result, the anomalies of monthly-averaged temperatures in the ETR were +2…4° or higher. The weather was warmer than ever on the Arctic Islands of Russia as well. Regarding Russia as a whole, the monthly-averaged air temperature in January was below normal: the last time this occurred was in January 2014.
The monthly-averaged air temperatures in most of Mongolia and in the east of China were above-normal (2-3 or more degrees higher in some places), whereas these figures in the rest of East Asia were close to normal.