Climatic winter has not been recorded in Kyiv for the last three years - Environment Ministry

Climatic winter has not been recorded in Kyiv for the last three years: 2022, 2023 and 2024.

This was reported by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine.

The department states that winters in recent years in Ukraine have changed significantly and if earlier it was a season of frosts and blizzards, now the weather often resembles late autumn or early spring. Warm weather, the absence of prolonged frosts and temperature records have become commonplace. And the main reason is global warming.

"Ukraine is one of the regions of the planet where the temperature increase has occurred at the highest rate over the past decade. Over the past 60 years, the average temperature increase in our territory has occurred almost 2.5 times faster than in the world as a whole. We are even ahead of Europe: the rate of increase in the average annual temperature in Ukraine in 1961–2023 was 0.41 degrees per decade, and in Europe - 0.34 degrees," explained Svitlana Krakovska, head of the laboratory of applied climatology of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute.

Climatic winter in Ukraine begins when the average daily air temperature drops below 0 °C and remains stable there. A quarter of a century ago, it came practically according to the calendar.

Now, due to global warming, there is practically no winter. According to the Central Geophysical Observatory, climatic winter has not been recorded in Kyiv for the last three years: 2022, 2023 and 2024. In these years, the average air temperature during the winter period was above 0 °C.

"Currently, Ukraine is characterized by temperature fluctuations in the winter period: from +5 to -5 degrees. However, against the background of a fairly high temperature, short-term waves of extreme frosts or abnormally strong blizzards that paralyze infrastructure may occur - and these are also manifestations of climate change. That is, against the background of a snowless winter, anomalous weather phenomena may occur, when a warm plus temperature in a few days is replaced by short-term, but very strong frosts that break through to us from the Arctic," the scientist added.

Recall that in Kyiv in 2024, 52 temperature records were recorded.

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