Daffodils bloom in front of Park Place Church of God in Anderson, Indiana, on Saturday, March 4, 2017.

(Don Knight/The Herald-Bulletin via AP)

An exceptionally early spring was welcomed by many winter-weary Americans, but the balmy weather does not bode well for how extensively and quickly human-induced greenhouse gas is affecting climate change, a new study says.

In February, more than 11,700 daily high records were set across much of the United States,and scientists working on a quick attribution study say the warmer than usual February can be linked to climate change.

Only 1954 had a warmer February than 2017, which finished 7.3 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average for the Lower 48 as a whole,the National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationWednesday.

Some of the more surprising stats: no snow cover in Chicago and a high of 99 degreesrecorded in Oklahoma. Texas and Louisiana had their. Daffodils and flowering trees bloomed some three weeks early in many areas.

The ,working as part of a group called,analyzed the influence of climate change on the balmy temperatures.

“We found clear and strong linksbetween last month’s record warmth in the United States, andclimate change,” Geert Jan van Oldenbourgh, senior research at the Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), said in the report. “Temperatures like those seen across the lower 48 this past February are becoming more and more common as cold winter months are getting rarer.”

The observations show a clear trend, he said,and climate models confirm it is caused by greenhouse gasses.

The team used models of the atmosphere as it exists and compared data with a hypothetical atmosphere containing no greenhouse gas emissions. They determined that a warm February like the one just experienced is roughly four times more likely in the current climate than it would have been in 1900, before the world was bombardedwith emissions.

While higher-than-normal temperatures primarily affected states east of the Rockies, the West saw unusual amounts of precipitation in past weeks, notes weather.com meteorologist Chris Dolce.

"Numerous atmospheric river events pounded the western region this winter, leading to a massive snowpack in California's Sierra Nevada and other parts of the mountain West,” Dolce said.

Meteorologists are concerned about how this mild winter will affect severe weather in the coming weeks.

Without the cooling effect of arctic blasts, steamy water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico could provide fuel for more intense severe weather activity in the coming months, weather.com meteorologist Jonathan Belles .

Scientists working on the climate analysis say they did not find the results all that surprising.

“It’s been known for quite some time now that the planet as a whole and the continents have been warming over the past century or so, and that human-induced atmospheric greenhouse gas increases are a principal cause of that century-scale increase,” Gabriel Vecchi, a participant in the study and professor of geosciences at the University of Princeton’s Environmental Institute, told weather.com.

Vecchi noted that record highs have been occurring more frequently over recent decades and record lows have been occurring less frequently which he says is consistent with what would be expected by the overall warming of the planet.

"We shouldn't be that surprised anymore about winter months like February 2017, and we should work to understand what they mean for our economy, agriculture, ecosystems and pestssince they're going to become more common in the decades to come,” he said.

Climate researchers independent of the study praised the analysis.

“I do like that the study does not try to answer the ‘was February 2017 caused by climate change,’ but rather talks about how likely February 2017 is in different climate scenarios,” David Titley, Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor and member of the National Academy of Sciences panel that certifies the accuracy of climate change attribution science, told weather.com.

“This is the new climate normal that we all need to come to grips with,” Titley said. “It’s stunning how quickly our climate has changed.”

Vecchi noted that not every winter is expected to be as mild as 2017, but the U.S. can expect more rather than fewer mild winters in the future as a result of climate change.

“We should not be that surprised anymore when we get more frequent and more extreme warm spells since we have strong evidence and physical reasons to think that greenhouse warming has loaded the dice towards warm winter months,” Vecchi said. "That's not to say that we won't have cold winters months anymore nor that we would have never had a winter as warm as this one without global warming.”