Are winters becoming extinct?

Are winters becoming extinct? Or am I the only one thinking of that? That smart turtleneck sweater, that black leather jacket and not forgetting the thick, heavy quilt; all of these have been lying unused for ages now.

Argument: If winters are the same as it were say 15 to 20 years back, then why did I require these things in the first place? It is smack bang in the middle of January, and I still need the air conditioner while at home or office or in my car. I don’t recall that being the case 15 years back. That’s when the sweater, jacket and quilt all came in use.

According to Wikipedia, the average temperatures have increased by less than 1 °C, but the averages have been spread over the entire surface area of Earth. This map on Wiki has a smoothening radius of 1200 kms. Meaning, the ‘resolution’ of this map is a circle of radius 1200 kms. We could cover the entire surface of the Earth with ~120 of these circles. In other words we don’t have enough data points.

If we could somehow increase the resolution of the map, we could see how much greater the variation would be. This could then explain why we don’t need sweaters in winter any longer. Some cities, I can think of, have probably gotten hotter by at least an average of 5 °C.

10 years into the future, would our winters disappear altogether? Would the entire year be just Hot Summer and Hotter Summer? James Lovelock, the proponent of the Gaia Theory says that the Sahara Desert will extend to Paris by 2040. (This page is an interesting read, scroll down to the section ‘The Revenge of the Gaia’ if you don’t have enough time!). Well we certainly will see a lot happen during our lifetimes!