Amid Winter Blooms, Wondering What That Means for Spring - NYTimes.com
“It is hard to draw conclusions about the pace of warming from a single winter, and indeed, the last decade in New York City has been one of the snowiest on record. Still, Fred Gadomski, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, said that temperatures were above normal in 80 percent of the days in the past three months in the city. Strong winds from the Pacific Ocean have blanketed most of the country with unusually mild air.
“‘That’s the distinguishing item this winter — the consistency of the mildness,’ Mr. Gadomski said. ‘If you took away that week in mid-January where it really was sort of cold, it would be the year without a winter.’
“Coincidentally, the federal Agriculture Department last month issued a new national map showing plant hardiness zones, which start with the coldest regions in the north and work their way south. In its first update since 1990, the map showed clear signs of things’ heating up. New York City, for instance, moved into a warmer zone, going from a “warm 6” to a “cold 7,” as Mr. Forrest put it. [That’s nothing new, the USDA has just been really slow to update its map. —Ed.]
“David W. Wolfe, a professor of plant and soil ecology at Cornell University and an expert on climate change, said the temperatures this winter appeared to ‘represent an extreme,’ even within the context of climate change. But, he said, the federal climate-zone guides from 1960, 1990 and this year reveal ‘an extremely fast pace’ of change.”
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