Northern Europe's warm winter stresses some

updated 4:39 p.m. ET March 4, 2008

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Icebreakers sit idle in ports. Insects crawl out of forest hideouts. Daffodils sprout up from green lawns.

Winter ended before it started in Europe's north, where record-high temperatures have people wondering whether it's a fluke or an ominous sign of a warming world.

"It's the warmest winter ever" recorded, said John Ekwall of the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute.

In December, January and February, the average temperature in Stockholm was 36 degrees — the highest on record since record-keeping began in 1756.

Record winter highs were set at 12 other locations across the country, according to the national weather service, SMHI.

Across the Baltic Sea, Latvia and most of Finland reported the warmest winter since 1925.

Latvia saw an average temperature of about 33 degrees, nine degrees above normal, according to the national meteorological agency.

Southern Finland had only 20 days of snow, compared to 70 days normally, while neighboring Estonia had to cancel a popular cross-country ski marathon in the southern city of Tartu in early February.

"I don't remember winter like this. We had almost no snow at all in February," said Merike Merilain, chief weather forecaster at Estonia's meteorological institute, EMHI.

"It's been emotionally very stressful, especially to many older people, that it's dark and rainy all the time," she added.

In Norway, the average temperature in February was the second highest on record, 8 degrees above normal.

Experts are careful not to blame global warming, noting that a warm winter could be followed by a cold one.

Warm Atlantic surface temps cited
The Finnish Meteorological Institute said the mild winter partly resulted from strong southerly and westerly air currents caused by exceptionally warm surface temperatures of the Atlantic.

Nevertheless, the higher temperatures have only fueled concern that greenhouse gasses are changing the climate, especially in the sensitive Arctic region.

"When we were young, back in the '80s, then winter existed," said Ronny Ahlstedt, 28, who works at an outdoor ice-skating rink in downtown Stockholm. "We are contributing to this warm weather by letting out all this pollution in the air."

In areas normally covered in snow and ice, spring-like temperatures have brought premature sightings of flowers such as winter aconite, snowdrops, wood anemone, daffodils and coltsfoot.

Migratory birds have returned from southern latitudes prematurely. In southern Sweden, they never left.

"The birds that have stayed are robins and chaffinches," said biologist Lars-Ake Janzon at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. "They stayed because there hasn't been any snow."

The warm weather also has stirred life inside the vast forests of the Nordic and Baltic countries, where insects such as ants and ticks emerged early from winter shelter.

For businesses, the mild weather has been a mixed blessing.

In Lithuania, logging companies say many dirt roads were impassable because they were thick with mud instead of frozen, leaving timber rotting in the damp forests.

The express ferries between Tallinn and Helsinki, however, have benefited from the lack of ice in the Gulf of Finland. Normally they are unable to operate from late December to April, but this year some of them have been running almost without interruptions.

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