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Weird weather brings warm welcome to 2016

• Yahoo News

A powerful and destructive low-pressure system in the North Atlantic has pushed the mercury up to two degrees Celsius (35.6 Fahrenheit) at the pole, 20 degrees above the seasonal norm.

The Arctic has borne the brunt of global warming, with temperatures three degrees higher than the pre-industrial era.

But linking the current mild conditions to climate change is premature, warned Natalie Hasell, meteorologist at the Canadian Department of the Environment, saying that scientists do not base their conclusions "on one anomaly".

The North Atlantic depression also brought eastern Canada an unusually warm holiday period, with temperatures hitting 15.9 degrees Celsius in Montreal on Christmas Eve, around 20 degrees above the seasonal average.

This was followed by heavy snow fell that covered the country's eastern half.

In the United States, tornadoes and floods left at least 49 dead.

The waters of the mighty Mississippi River have already exceeded overflow levels by four metres in some areas, claiming 13 lives.

In the south, spectacular tornadoes devastated parts of Texas.

The common cause of the unusual events is a particularly strong El Nino system, amplified by global warming, according to scientists.

El Ninos, which emerge every four to seven years on average and run from October through January, are triggered by a shift in trade winds across the Pacific around the Equator.

However, the 2015 episode is "probably the strongest in the last 100 years," said Jerome Lecou, ??forecaster at Meteo-France.

"There is no simple answer" to explain the exceptional conditions, he added.


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