Britain’s snow and climate change

NOTE: This post is from January 2010. I put a temperature anomaly plot from October 2010 here and I’ll do one for November 2010 as soon as the data is available.

I’m sure most of the Brits out there have seen this amazing NASA image of Britain covered in snow.  I love satellite images and use them a lot in my research – they really help me get a grasp of the big picture.

But what does this cold weather tell us about climate change?  Well, if we examine the whole northern hemisphere and look at how the temperatures for December compared to those from the last 30 years, then we get an interesting picture:

So, northern Europe and North America were colder than usual.  But southern Europe, Greenland, the Arctic and north Africa were all warmer than usual.  The situation for January will probably be quite similar.  So, looking at the bigger picture, the recent cold conditions in the UK don’t really tell us much about climate change – we need to look on big scales in both time and area.

Tags: Climate change, Climatology, satellite data, science, Snow, UK weather, winter