January 2023 landed as the 5th warmest on record at Albany looking at records dating back to 1874 with a monthly mean temperature of 32.9 degrees. Or, January was the warmest on record in a more "Apples to Apples" data comparison looking at the records back to 1939 after the climate site was moved to the current airport location. (Prior to May 1938 observations were taken at different sites in Albany.) Either way you look at it the month was warm, not only locally but throughout the Northeast. So, was climate change the reason for the warmth, was it something else, or was it a combination of factors? The answer of course is complex but like everything in the atmosphere it always comes down to a combination of factors of which climate change is a part of.

It is important, though, to understand that climate change, or global warming, whichever phrase you prefer, did not cause the weather pattern that resulted in the anomalous warmth that occurred in January 2023. The mild weather pattern would have set-up with or without a warming climate because weather itself is not the same as and is largely independent of climate.

Instead, the mild weather pattern evolved through a combination of factors that included a remarkably stable and strong stratospheric polar vortex, a slightly negative phase of the arctic oscillation (AO) which was balanced by a largely neutral phase of the north Atlantic oscillation (NAO) which when combined effectively bottled up arctic air well north of the border resulting in the sustained and unusually mild weather observed throughout the Northeast. With arctic air out of the picture for the entire month, the dominant player at the jet stream level was a persistent high pressure ridge aloft over the Southeast, common in La Nina winters, which resulted in a cloudy and active pattern that put the Northeast on the warmer side of storms as they tracked either west or directly over the Northeast resulting in consistent above average temperatures.

The stability of the pattern, which began just after the brief Christmas 2022 cold snap, allowed for a remarkable 35 consecutive day run of warmer than average days to occur at Albany beginning on December 27, 2022 and not ending until January 30th.

The role climate change likely played in January's warmth was to enhance it, making it more likely for the extended run of warmer than average days to have occurred than if the background atmosphere was cooler. In other words, because the atmosphere is considerably warmer today than it was 50 to 100 years ago, we commonly now observe that when warm weather patterns develop it's now more likely for those patterns to be warmer today than if the same patterns were to have set up 50 or 100 years ago. And these warmer patterns are also being shown to have more staying power, as we just observed with how persistent this most recent stretch of warmth was in January. Conversely, cold weather patterns are gradually becoming less cold and lasting for shorter periods of time as the oceans and the atmosphere continue to warm due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere caused largely by human emissions. That's the impact of climate change. For more on human induced climate change and the reasons we know it's us, click here.

For additional evidence of how global warming is enhancing the warmth in warm weather patterns, especially those that occur in the winter, look at the top warmest January's records analysis back to 1939. (shown on the chart above) Seven of the top eight warmest January's on record have all occurred recently since 1990 with five of them happening since 2006. Natural climate variability says that you can and will get extremes in warm and cold months every now and again with the extremes generally balancing out. With our warming world, however, we're observing that warm extremes are now occurring far more frequently versus the cold extremes which are becoming increasingly rare.

Just since 2000, including January 2023, 42 months at Albany have landed in the top ten for warmest on record versus only eight for coldest. This is a clear modern day climate change warming signal independent of climate fluctuations created by natural, or in other words, non human causes.

Data collected and analyzed by our partners at Climate Central show that January is the fastest warming month in the local area with the average monthly temperature up an exceptional 7 degrees since 1970. The straight line on the chart illustrates the climate with the clear upward trend in the monthly average temperature over time. The high variability of the weather from year to year is shown by each point on the curve which illustrates that warmer January's are getting warmer over time with colder ones progressively becoming less cold.

January 2023 Summary

Here are the details of how January played out across eastern New York and western New England.

Month Highlights at Albany

• 5th warmest January on record, to date - Monthly mean temperature of 32.9 degrees, 8.5 degrees warmer than the 1991-2020 thirty year average
• Lowest temperature recorded: 18 degrees
• Every day except for the 31st was warmer than average, no days cooler than average
• A maximum temperature of at least 30 degrees was recorded every day setting a new record

• Wetter than average - total precipitation: 3.31", 0.71" above average
• Below average snowfall of 11.0", -4.6"
• Largest single day snowfall of 6" on the 23rd
• Peak westerly wind gust of 36 mph on the 1st (The month was not particularly windy)

Records back to 1874 show that the period from December 28, 2022 through January 7, 2023 was the warmest on record at Albany with a mean temperature for the period of 39.5 degrees besting the previous record holder in 2007 by over a full degree. Further, the first seven days of January 2023 came in the 4th warmest on record.

Typically a month that lands in the top 10 for warmest will have at least one and sometimes two periods of extreme and often record breaking warm daily temperatures to skew the average. That, however, was not the case in January 2023. In fact temperatures overall were not particularly extreme or remarkable, but instead unusually uniform and stable. There were no daily records for temperature set. However, minimum temperatures were consistently exceptionally high, due in part to a lot of cloud cover which dominated throughout the month. In fact no minimum temperature on any day in January at Albany was below average, which is remarkable especially considering the time of the year.

There were only two days in January where the maximum temperature came in slightly below average (the 14th and 31st) with the high on the 11th coming in at average.

The charts below plot the daily low and high temperature departures from the 1991-2020 thirty year climate normals for January 2023 at Albany

Daily observed maximum and minimum temperatures at Albany in January 2023 - Every day came in warmer than average except the 31st where the mean temperature for the day was exactly average.

The daily mean temperature departure graphic below shows how far above average each day in January was at Albany. (A daily mean temperature is calculated by adding the high and the low and then diving by 2.)

January's warmth was also apparent at the four other local climate sites with warm departures ranging from 9 to 10 degrees, which is exceptional.

PRECIPITATION

January 2023 featured an active storm pattern, which is typical in La Nina winters. But, with cold air largely out of the picture and the storm track largely riding up either west of or directly through the Northeast, there were no blockbusters with most of the precipitation that fell coming as either rain or a mixture of rain, snow, and freezing rain.

And there were a lot of systems with raw wet weather a times from the 3rd through the 5th, with some elevation snow and valley rain on the 6th. Additional stormy weather from the 12th through the 13th brought a combination of rain, snow, and patchy freezing rain with some nuisance freezing rain or freezing drizzle on the 17th.

A more significant storm occurred from the 19th through the 20th with icy mixed wintry precipitation. That system was then followed by the most important storm of the month which had air just cold enough to work with to support mainly snow for the majority of the region amounting to moderate to locally heavy accumulations from the 22nd into the 23rd.

Some additional nuisance snow and mixed precipitation occurred on the 25th with a bit of snow to close out the month from the 30th to the 31st.

January 2023 precipitation amounts for the local climate sites

• Glens Falls: 3.97 " (+1.41")
• Poughkeepsie: 3.37 " (+0.55")
  
• Bennington, VT: Not Available
  
• Pittsfield, MA: 4.39 " (+1.72")