Analysis Of CET Winter Temperatures

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
http://ift.tt/16C5B6P

By Paul Homewood

It is widely accepted that winters are becoming milder in the UK on average. But averages can often be misleading, so what does this actually mean?

In a post last week, I analysed CET daily mean temperatures for February, looking at the highest and lowest daily temperatures in each year:

http://ift.tt/1Ag4tlV

As I commented, the peaks are not getting higher, for either the daily high or daily low bands. In other words, we are not experiencing temperatures for either that we have not had many times in the past.

But what is readily apparent is that in the last couple of decades there has been a marked absence of really cold weather.

I have now extended the analysis for December and January, and we find a very similar pattern:

http://ift.tt/1Ag4tlV

December 2015 stands out as unusually warm, with both the highest and lowest daily mean temperatures above anything else on record. Readers may recall that this was the month of storms from the Atlantic!

But apart from that year, as with February, the bands are not going up. And again, we find the same with January too.

As with February, there is an almost total absence of really cold spells of weather, with the exception of December 2010.

Put another way, we are not experiencing “warmer weather”, but just more of it.

If we did a similar analysis for, say, London and Glasgow, we should expect to see consistently higher daily highs and lows for London, as the climate is warmer, being further south.

In the same way, if the UK climate really was growing warmer, should we not see the same pattern?

Does any of this actually matter?

Well, on a simplistic level, I think most people would agree that it is a good thing to have less, extreme cold weather.

But on a deeper level, what we are seeing is a weather phenomenon, and not a climate one. (Yes, I know that “climate” is the summation of many years of “weather”).

Just because we have not had much really cold weather recently does not mean that we won’t get more in future.