Where did the Northern Hemisphere winter rank in terms of temperature?

Depending on the database you are using, the Northern Hemisphere had its 5th and 8th warmest winter on record for the December 2020-February 2021 period, according to NASA and NOAA. Records go back as far as 1880.

According to NASA, the average temperature for meteorological winter (December-February) in the Northern Hemisphere was 1.17 degrees Celsius above the 1951-1980 mean, placing it in a tie for 5th warmest on record.

Image courtesy NASA GISS.

In the NOAA database, the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2020-2021 was the 8th warmest on record, averaging 1.02 degrees Celsius above the 20th century mean.

Images courtesy NOAA.

According to NOAA, it has been 45 years since the Northern Hemisphere has experienced a colder-than-normal winter.

Why didn't the winter rank in the top three? One reason may be the influence of an ongoing La Nina. La Nina is the abnormal cooling of the surface waters along the equatorial Pacific, which can alter the jet stream pattern during the winter and have a light cooling influence.

In the Southern Hemisphere, which just transitioned from summer to fall, the December 2020-February 2021 period was the 19th warmest on record, according to NOAA and the 23rd warmest according to NASA.

Image courtesy NASA GISS.

Globally, the December-January average temperature anomalies were +0.74 of a degree Celsius (NOAA) and +0.77 of a degree Celsius (NASA), which made the period as 8th warmest on record for both databases.