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The weird thing is Moscow wasn't always quite so mild.
Look at old climate normals and you'll see much colder average winter temps. Amazing.
Has warmed up more than 5 degrees over the last 30 years or so.
Weird thing about recent global warming is that some places have warmed significantly,
while other areas not so much.
Even in my country it varies a lot, Calgary, for example, 1981-2010 winter averages are
a few degrees warmer than 1961-1990 ...even significant warming since 1971-2000 normals,
eastern Canada only has experienced slight winter warming....nothing like Moscow!
Another area that had warmed like crazy in Phoenix, AZ and Las Vegas,NV ....
mainly the lows....farther east in SW USA only very slight warming,
in fact average highs in Albuquerque are cooler 1981-2010 than 1971-2000!
5C warming in the last 30 years?
According to my data, using 1961-90 as base period, the 24-hr mean for January in Moscow (Red square, 156 m asl) was -9.3C for January (Source: WMO) and -7.7C for Feb.
July and Aug were 18.2C and 16.4C.
If it has warmed 5C in the last 30 years then Jan mean should be something like -4C there..
I did not forget Hakkari. Hakkari has warmer average high and average low temperatures in winter. That's why I didn't write Hakkari. Yüksekova is a district of Hakkari. I wrote cities according to central districts. Some districts might be colder than the central districts but there is no data for them. For example Ardahan Göle is colder than Ardahan but the data exists only for central district.
5C warming in the last 30 years?
According to my data, using 1961-90 as base period, the 24-hr mean for January in Moscow (Red square, 156 m asl) was -9.3C for January (Source: WMO) and -7.7C for Feb.
July and Aug were 18.2C and 16.4C.
If it has warmed 5C in the last 30 years then Jan mean should be something like -4C there..
The location in Moscow that wiki is currently using indicates
January average high -4C ...January average low -9.1C
Mean average January temperature -6.5C
I have an old National Geographic Atlas that has average monthly temps for major cities,
it has January average high for Moscow at -7C / 19F...the average high lower than what
January average mean is today ...with average January low of 14C
Moscow was a one time was slightly colder than Montreal,
now it is significantly warmer. Is it exactly 5C warmer than it was?.... I was careful to not indicate C or F
...you assumed I meant C ...maybe I meant 5F ....I'm not telling....
close to 5C... perhaps 3C or 4C , also I stated 30 years, maybe I should have stated 60 years.
All I know is Moscow of today is much warmer than Moscow of the first half of the
20th century. And other places not so much of a dramatic warm up ...including poor Montreal
The way Moscow January is warming ...maybe in 30 years they'll be warmer than Toronto!
My grandma told me that in the early 40s the temperatures in winter would often drop into -30 and -40, so Moscow was probably in fact colder back then
It did occationally. The 40's had some of the coldest winters on record. These were of course outliers.
Much of Moscow's cold reputation comes from stories from the Napoleonic Wars and WWII. War stories and the cold is always exaggerated. The other thing comes from Hollywood. During the Cold War (no pun) tough cold-hardy villains were popular. Moscow -> Russia -> cold.
January 1950 was also very cold for North America as well, especially the western half.
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