Russian bears are meant to hibernate in winter and wake up in March.
But the weather has been so mild this year that a black bear in St Petersburg zoo has not gone to sleep at all, and a brown bear has already woken up believing it is spring.
It's the same story in Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, where hunters report that one of the warmest winters ever recorded has woken bears several months early.
The polar bears of the Arctic, where unusual extremes of temperature have become commonplace, are having to live with reductions in sea ice, which makes it difficult to hunt seals - a phenomenon that, expert say, could lead to their extinction.
According to climatologists in Scandinavia, Russia, Estonia and Iceland, record or well above average temperatures are being recorded across a great swathe of Scandinavia and northern Europe as balmy winds linked to the same Atlantic storm that brought gale-force winds and flooding this week to Scotland, blow in from the west.
"Temperatures have been 8-9C (46-49F) higher than normal," said Roman Vilfant, head of Russia's Gidromettsentr weather monitoring centre. "The first 10 days of January have been very warm indeed. Usually air temperatures begin rising above zero after March 27.
"This temperature is characteristic of the first days of April," said Tatyana Pozdnyakova of the Moscow weather bureau. "The warmth this year may be an effect of global warming. Climatic change chiefly affects winters," she said. "It's way warmer than usual in Scandinavia and Eurasia, very mild", said Pal Prestrud, director of the Norwegian government's centre for climate research. "Here in Oslo, the average temperature at this time of year is -4C, but it is close to 3C."
"The winter here is above average, too", said Haddor Bjornsson, a climatologist with the Icelandic government's meteorological office. "We are seeing an overall warming. October 2004 was the only month in the last 30 which has been below the average temperature."
In Estonia, where the average January temperature is -5C, they have been touching 7C. The warm spell is dramatically affecting life in usually freezing places.
The Izvestia newspaper has reported that the river Neva in St Petersburg which is normally locked below ice until spring, has broken its banks, and in Moscow, where temperatures have reached a record 7C by early afternoon, several ice sculpting exhibitions and ice hockey matches have had to be cancelled. While some people say that it is is saving them money, others are complaining that it is upsetting their metabolism.
The uncommonly warm temperatures are falling into a pattern observed by a team of 300 scientists who reported in November, after a four year study, that northern latitudes are rising rapidly due to global warming.
They reported that Alaskan, western Canadian and eastern Russian average winter temperatures have risen as much as 4-7F in the past 50 years - and projected that they would increase another 7-13F over the next century.
Yesterday, Nick Rayner, marine data research scientist at the UK's Hadley Centre for Climate Change, said that the warming of the arctic since mid-19th century had been far greater than in the rest of the world.
There had also been more record highs and lows in temperature.
"There are a lot of local anomalies. Siberia was 5C warmer than normal this November. In this case, over the whole period from the 1850s, the climate above 67 degrees north was 1.5C warmer. This was more than double the warming experienced in the rest of the world.
She said that computer models predicted that the poles would heat faster than the rest of the world. "In the arctic there is already a dramatic shrinking of the sea ice round the pole and, over the whole of the region, less snow.
Both factors add to warming because there was less reflection of the sun's rays back into space. The exposed water and rock heated up as a result.
The spring thaw has been advancing one day a year since 1988, according to Nasa scientists.
An early thaw means a longer growing season for the arctic and the boreal forest, the ring of mostly evergreen trees that stretches across the northern reaches of North America and Eurasia, but it also means that more carbon, stored in the region's usually frozen soils, will be released into the air, accelerating global warming.
The wild fluctuations predicted by climatologists could be seen yesterday in Alaska. After the warmest summer and wettest springs ever recorded last year - which had seen wasps flying at 73 degrees north - the climate research centre yesterday said that the temperature had plummeted to a chilling -46F in Fairbanks.
Meanwhile, the warm weather in Russia and Scandinavia is expected to end in the next few days. By the middle of next week, temperatures are predicted to be fluctuating between -5 to -15C - leaving some very confused bears.
But the weather has been so mild this year that a black bear in St Petersburg zoo has not gone to sleep at all, and a brown bear has already woken up believing it is spring.
It's the same story in Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, where hunters report that one of the warmest winters ever recorded has woken bears several months early.
The polar bears of the Arctic, where unusual extremes of temperature have become commonplace, are having to live with reductions in sea ice, which makes it difficult to hunt seals - a phenomenon that, expert say, could lead to their extinction.
According to climatologists in Scandinavia, Russia, Estonia and Iceland, record or well above average temperatures are being recorded across a great swathe of Scandinavia and northern Europe as balmy winds linked to the same Atlantic storm that brought gale-force winds and flooding this week to Scotland, blow in from the west.
"Temperatures have been 8-9C (46-49F) higher than normal," said Roman Vilfant, head of Russia's Gidromettsentr weather monitoring centre. "The first 10 days of January have been very warm indeed. Usually air temperatures begin rising above zero after March 27.
"This temperature is characteristic of the first days of April," said Tatyana Pozdnyakova of the Moscow weather bureau. "The warmth this year may be an effect of global warming. Climatic change chiefly affects winters," she said. "It's way warmer than usual in Scandinavia and Eurasia, very mild", said Pal Prestrud, director of the Norwegian government's centre for climate research. "Here in Oslo, the average temperature at this time of year is -4C, but it is close to 3C."
"The winter here is above average, too", said Haddor Bjornsson, a climatologist with the Icelandic government's meteorological office. "We are seeing an overall warming. October 2004 was the only month in the last 30 which has been below the average temperature."
In Estonia, where the average January temperature is -5C, they have been touching 7C. The warm spell is dramatically affecting life in usually freezing places.
The Izvestia newspaper has reported that the river Neva in St Petersburg which is normally locked below ice until spring, has broken its banks, and in Moscow, where temperatures have reached a record 7C by early afternoon, several ice sculpting exhibitions and ice hockey matches have had to be cancelled. While some people say that it is is saving them money, others are complaining that it is upsetting their metabolism.
The uncommonly warm temperatures are falling into a pattern observed by a team of 300 scientists who reported in November, after a four year study, that northern latitudes are rising rapidly due to global warming.
They reported that Alaskan, western Canadian and eastern Russian average winter temperatures have risen as much as 4-7F in the past 50 years - and projected that they would increase another 7-13F over the next century.
Yesterday, Nick Rayner, marine data research scientist at the UK's Hadley Centre for Climate Change, said that the warming of the arctic since mid-19th century had been far greater than in the rest of the world.
There had also been more record highs and lows in temperature.
"There are a lot of local anomalies. Siberia was 5C warmer than normal this November. In this case, over the whole period from the 1850s, the climate above 67 degrees north was 1.5C warmer. This was more than double the warming experienced in the rest of the world.
She said that computer models predicted that the poles would heat faster than the rest of the world. "In the arctic there is already a dramatic shrinking of the sea ice round the pole and, over the whole of the region, less snow.
Both factors add to warming because there was less reflection of the sun's rays back into space. The exposed water and rock heated up as a result.
The spring thaw has been advancing one day a year since 1988, according to Nasa scientists.
An early thaw means a longer growing season for the arctic and the boreal forest, the ring of mostly evergreen trees that stretches across the northern reaches of North America and Eurasia, but it also means that more carbon, stored in the region's usually frozen soils, will be released into the air, accelerating global warming.
The wild fluctuations predicted by climatologists could be seen yesterday in Alaska. After the warmest summer and wettest springs ever recorded last year - which had seen wasps flying at 73 degrees north - the climate research centre yesterday said that the temperature had plummeted to a chilling -46F in Fairbanks.
Meanwhile, the warm weather in Russia and Scandinavia is expected to end in the next few days. By the middle of next week, temperatures are predicted to be fluctuating between -5 to -15C - leaving some very confused bears.
