Recently, people constantly talk about climate change, global warming and other phenomena, complaining that every year the harsh Russian winter is getting closer to the European one, and the temperate summer is more like a tropical one. Let's try to figure out if everything is so bad with our climate. And the temperature in Moscow in January will serve us as a material for analysis.
general information
By its geographical location, the capital belongs to the zone of temperate continental climate, so that according to all the laws of meteorology, the temperature in Moscow in January should be no more than twenty degrees with a minus sign. The absolute maximum, by the way, recorded by scientists, is minus nineteen, while the average minimum is minus seventeen Celsius.
In addition, the temperature in Moscow in January after the winter solstice does not drop below fifteen degrees. The historical maximum, by the way, was plus four - not at all what you expect from a harsh Russian winter. So, in principle, it cannot be said that the first month of the year is as cold as is commonly believed. Still, stupid to argue with dry statistics.
Cases of bygone days
But back to the specifics. Analyzing the period from 2002 to 2012 (a decade is a rather long period), we can say that the average air temperature in Moscow in January was minus five degrees. The coldest year for the studied period was 2010, then the average monthly temperature dropped to canonical minus fifteen. In 2006, the second “coldness” year, the thermometer fell to minus ten.
The warmest were 2007 and 2005 with minus one and minus two degrees, respectively. So is it global warming or a commonplace coincidence? Let's try to get the latest information.
What about today?
In the period from 2012 to 2016, the situation has not changed significantly. The temperature in Moscow in January averaged minus seven degrees. At the same time, the warmest year was the past 2015 with a record minus three. Of course, many will now notice that this year there was no winter at all, but at the same time January-2016 was extremely unstable: at the beginning of the year the weather pleased us with frosts of minus twenty, in some places we recorded even minus twenty six, but by the end months, the temperature rose to those same record plus four, thereby exceeding the norm of recent years by thirteen degrees.
conclusions
So what is it like - the temperature in Moscow in January? One thing is documented information, some meteorological canons and other scientific data, and another is the reality that we encounter every day. It is safe to say that in recent years, the temperature is definitely much higher than normal. And how this can be explained is very, very difficult to say. The only thing left for us is to wait for the next winter to either ascertain the tendency to increase the average monthly January temperature or to refute its existence, attributing everything not to global processes, but to the influence of various factors, such as cyclones and sea currents.