Alps Warmest In 1,300 Years As "Winter" Sets In - Reuters

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VIENNA - It is warmer in Europe's Alpine region now than at any time in the past 1,300 years, the head of a wide-ranging climatic survey said on Tuesday.

From Ottawa to Moscow, temperatures generally have been way above average at the start of winter in the northern hemisphere, with flowers blooming on snow-starved slopes of Alpine ski resorts and bears struggling to hibernate. "We are now experiencing the warmest period (for this season) in the past 1,300 years," said Reinhard Boehm, chief climatologist at Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geo-Dynamics in Vienna.

He cited a study by a group of European climatic institutes that reconstructed more than a millennium of weather patterns in a region ranging from France's Rhone Valley in the west to Hungary in the east, and from Germany's Nuremberg area in the north to Italy's Tuscany in the south.

Temperatures generally did not diverge from a naturally frigid winter level except for one thaw between the 10th and 12th centuries, and Alpine glaciers reached their greatest size around 1850, Boehm told Austrian press agency APA.

EDIT

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39344/story.htm