The warm winters of recent years stem from climatic change, but do not yet indicate an irreversible trend, Kouts said.
According to Kouts, the last time the region had particularly warm winters was in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when four winters in a row saw above-average temperatures.
To find a similar series of warm winters before that, you would have to go back several hundred years, he said.
Meanwhile, the winter of 2002-2003 was significantly colder than average, Kouts said.
