MAIN WEATHER AND CLIMATE TRAITS IN THE NORTHEN HEMISPHERE AS OF MARCH 2024
Air temperature
Bitter cold which had been freezing most of Russia at the end of February quickly began to retreat with the onset of calendar spring. The air temperatures in the north-west of the ETR, in Central Russia and in the north of Siberia reached new maxima as early as in the first days of March, and the temperature anomalies averaged for the first decade amounted to +2-6° or more in these areas. Cold weather survived only in the Black Earth and Volga regions as well as in the south of the Far East, but intrusions of cold into abnormally warm regions did also take place: on the night from March 5 to March 6, such an intrusion targeted Central Russia where the thermometer readings dropped to -20°.
In the second decade, heat continued to set in, extending the area of its anomalous highs in the north-west and in Central Russia, and creating a new heat centre in the south of Siberia and in Trans-Baikal. New daily temperature maxima were recorded again in the north-west of the ETR, in the central region and in Cis-Urals, yet cold bursts down to -20° or to -25° in the Kama River area occurred stillIn the third decade, the weather remained cold along the Arctic coast, in the north of the Urals and in Yakutia only, with negative decade-averaged temperature anomalies of -2…-6° or larger, whereas the weather in the rest of the territory was abnormally warm, with anomalies up to +2-4° or more in the ETR, in the south of the Urals and of Western Siberia, and up to +2-10° in the Far East.