Comments

1. #1 Juuro

   April 1, 2009

   I did not realize it had been such a mild winter. On a “normal” winter (ten years ago) I would expect to see ice cover all the way to the outer islands — except for the ship route right there of course.

2. #2 "GrrlScientist"

   April 1, 2009

   do you know if this is an unusually warm year or is it part of a larger trend (global warming)? do you know if anyone has systematically monitored these things?

3. #3 Juuro

   April 2, 2009

   The onset of this winter was late, but after that the temperatures were close to what would be expected.

   The ice cover, admittedly, is a poor metric. It is tremendously variable from year to year. Some examples from a single decade can be seen here:
   http://www.fimr.fi/en/tietoa/jaa/jaatalvi/en_GB/jaatalvi/

   This pretty much demolishes my comment; there is effectively no “normal” year for ice cover.

   Temperatures have been tracked at many locations for a longish while now. This the last image on this page shows some records.
   http://www.fmi.fi/ilmastonmuutos/suomessa_17.html

   For the Helsinki dataset the urbanisation has been discounted in the thinner red line; upward trend still shows.