Swimmers are enjoying winter dips in the Mediterranean, ski resorts from Canada to France have laid off workers, and shops are axing winter coat prices at the start of what scientists say may be the warmest year on record.
With unusually high temperatures, dazed bears in Moscow zoo have just dropped off for winter hibernation after months of insomnia while peacocks in a Bulgarian zoo have laid eggs, reckoning spring has long since arrived.
Warmth has brought peach, plum and apricot blossoms months early in Italy and snow drop flowers are blooming in Chicago. Some farmers worry that sprouting crops are vulnerable to frost.
"We are in a period of extreme events," said Achim Steiner, head of the UN environment programme, noting five months of floods in east Africa and melting Alpine glaciers.
Global warming, stoked by greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, and an El Nino warming of the Pacific Ocean are widely blamed by scientists for mild weather that contributed to push oil prices below $53 a barrel last week, a 19-month low.
Mr Steiner said governments should cut greenhouse gases and work out how to adapt to more heat - the 10 warmest years since records began 150 years ago have been since 1994. "Climate change, whether this is linked to greenhouse gases or not, is real and it's getting more extreme," he said.
Against a warming trend, California has put out a warning of a looming freeze in the coming days. In Bahrain, people have donated winter clothes to poor Indian immigrants after a cool December.
Spain's southern region of Andalucia has had temperatures of almost 20 degrees in recent days and people are still swimming in the Mediterranean - normally too chilly in winter.
A lack of snow has upset the Alpine World Cup ski calendar and France's Val d'Isere will host two men's races on January 20th and 21st originally scheduled for Chamonix.
In Europe, workers have been laid off in ski resorts from France to Norway. Canada's Blue Mountain resort in Ontario closed twice this season and temporarily laid off 1,000 workers.
The United Nations says 2006 was the sixth warmest year worldwide since records began in the 1860s. US government forecasters say 2006 was the warmest in the US since records began there 112 years ago. And Britain's Meteorological Office has projected that 2007 will be the warmest worldwide on record.
But many farmers are worried. In South Africa, hailstones the size of tennis balls pounded the Eastern Cape province, killing small livestock, in the summer month of December.
Europe's wheat farmers had ideal weather in the autumn but plants are vulnerable. "The risk of frost damage and winterkill is . . . higher than normal," French analyst Strategie Grains said.
And pests usually killed by cold are surviving - also raising fears in some nations of more cases of malaria.
- (Reuters)