At a Glance

It has been unseasonably warm this fall in the Northeast.Climate scientists and meteorologists say it's too early to determine what role, if any, climate change had in the warm weather.Long-term trends are a better indicator of climate change rather than a single weather event, scientists say.Overall, 2017 is likely to become the third-warmest on record.

Dipping temperatures,frosty nights and perhaps the first snowfall of the year is typically expected in the Northeast by November. Instead, the region has been feelingsomething more akin to springtime weather.

Nodoubt, the unusual weather this fall has many people questioning whether climate change to blame. The answer to that,according to climate experts, is complicated.

While it has been warm, it hasn't necessarily been exceptionally warm, saidBob Henson, weather and climate blogger at Weather Underground.

"October and November were incredibly mild, to be sure, but in November it's actually been slightly below average from the Midwest and the mid-Atlantic into the Northeast," he said.

Skaters enjoyed unseasonably warm weather at the Ice Rink at Rockefeller Center in New York City back in 2008.

(Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Central Park is averaging 46.5 degrees F for November thus far. That's 1.7 F below average, although the lowest temps were concentrated in that Nov.10-12 cold spell, Henson said.

Nationwide, the September through October period was the 16th warmest on record, Henson noted.

"We'll have the full numbers for autumn in a few days.I doubt we'll set a national record for warmest autumn, although a few locations and maybe some states in the South/Southwest probably will," he said.

Still, scientists will study this fall's weather patterns to determine what, if any, roleclimate change had in the warmer weather.

"As with any seasonal-scale heat wave, a full attribution study could take a stab at determining how much more likely climate change made the event," Henson said.

Jake Crouch, a physical scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Centers for Environmental Information, told weather.com that the warming weather paints a picture confirmed by scientific study.

"For the autumn season, the Northeast is warming at a rate ofsince records began in 1895," Crouch said. "While it is difficult to claim that the temperature outcomes from any given month or season are the directly caused by climate change, we know that experiencing very warm and record warm conditions are expected to occur more frequently in a warming world."

Crouch noted that there were alsoother contributing factorsto the warmth in the Northeast this fall, including modes of climate variability originating in the North Pacific and the North Atlantic.

"This very warm autumn fits into the trend of long-term warming in the region," he said.

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Similar questions of the link between global warming and extreme weather events arose in the aftermath of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. Jon Erdman, weather.com senior meteorologist,noted at the time that it was too early to tell.

“It is very difficult to ascertain whether and to what extent these hurricanes would have happened without climate change. This takes examination of various factors by meteorologists and climate scientists.”

, director of the University of Georgia's atmospheric sciences program and former president of the American Meteorological Society, says that "weather is your mood; climate is your personality," meaninga single weather event like a heat wave cannot be linked to climate,but long-term trends are better indicators of a changing climate.

And2017 is proving to be one for the books and one climate scientists will look at closely as partof the bigger picture.

"We are on track for 2017 to be one of the three warmest years on record globally," Henson said. "As it turns out, the U.S. is also on track for its third warmest year on record. Such warmth is becoming more likely every year as we add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The increased warmth doesn't show up in every nation every year, but in 2017 the U.S. and the planet as a whole are in close alignment to have one of the warmest years on record."