Unusial winter 2011/2012 in Slovakia

• Main Authors: Faško, P., Lapin, M., Matejovič, P., Pecho, J. (Jozef)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: winter characteristics; climate variabilit; climate change; global warming; Arctic; Climate change; Global warming; Alaska
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0232358

Last winter (Dec. 2011 – Feb. 2012) had about 0.6 °C higher mean air temperature on the Northern hemisphere con-tinents than the 1961 – 1990 normal. In spite of this some continental regions were significantly below normal, mainly due to unusually cold weather during the first half of February (Central and Eastern Asia, Alaska and Southeastern Europe). On the other hand, the Northern Europe and NorthernAsia had mean temperature above normal, the Northern America and the Arctic significantly above normal. Three winter months exhibited extreme deviations of seve-ral climatologic variables from normal also in Slovakia. While 17 days (of total 91) were colder than the normal range, 41 days were warmer (normal range for daily mean temperature is ±2.7 °C from the long-term average). Southern Slovakia had only several days with snow cover and precipitation totals about 80% of normal, but some localities inthe northwestern Slovakia were paralyzed by heavy snowfalls and precipitation totals exceeded 200% of normal there. General people and media spoke on century cold winter, damages topped millions of Euro. Climatologists are reserved in their statements, because of having long-term measurements and analyses since 1775.