Record breaking heat and the absence of snow will make this a Christmas to remember in the eastern portion of North America. Cities from Florida all the way up to Canada are expected to shatter heat records on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In many places temperatures will exceed 70 – 80 degrees Fahrenheit which is 30-40 degrees above normal.
The unseasonable warmth is cause by a bulge in the jet stream due to a combination of a strong El Niño event, the North Atlantic Oscillation and sustained climate warming from greenhouse gas emissions.
The Washington Post called the heat, “nothing short of historic. Dozens of records will fall, some by very large margins.” Another article headline reads, “This Could Be a Year Without Christmas For the East Coast”
Daily record highs have been killing record lows, in the last week alone 2,139 daily high temperature records have been set while only six daily low records have been set.
You can forget about a white Christmas. Almost all of the Northeast is snow-free and the absence of snow is setting records in places like Buffalo New York which has had no measurable snowfalls.
As explained by AccuWeather Meteorologists, “On Christmas Eve, parts of the mid-Atlantic and New England could be just as warm as they were on the Fourth of July.” AccuWeather’s Chief Long Range Meteorologist Paul Pastelok said, “On Christmas Eve, daily record highs may be broken in the morning, followed by monthly record highs in the afternoon.”
Globally November 2015 was the warmest ever representing seven consecutive months of well above average temperatures. Before that October set a record, as did September.
As reported by the Guardian, this December is already the hottest on record in the UK. We saw the warmest summer on record in 2015 and the US had its warmest autumn this year and globally 2015 is already the hottest year on record.
The warm weather is driving serious droughts in Latin America and extreme weather elsewhere including Africa. Warm Pacific temperatures have also spawned a record number of hurricanes and cyclones.
The warm weather is expected to persist throughout the remainder of 2015 and it will likely to continue into 2016 and beyond. The Met Office forecast that the global average temperature in 2016 would be a record 1.14C above pre-industrial temperatures. Record breaking heat is the new normal.
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