I think I can be fairly confident in saying that, for the CET series at least, we will not have the warmest winter on record this year.
The stats on the Hadley site just take the mean temperature for each of the three winter months and divide by 3.
1868/9 had a total figure of 20.3C if you add up the 3 winter months which gives an average of 6.77C when divided by 3.
For 2015/16 I expect the February CET to finish at 4.9C. This gives a total of 20.0C for the winter months and a mean of 6.67C. Allowing for the fact that my calculations can be 0.1-0.2C out that would still not be enough to even equal the record.
A more accurate calculation on a daily basis gives a mean for 1868/9 of 6.74C. My calculations for 2015/16 give 6.71C so this is closer but we still miss the record.
Originally Posted by: Global Warming