Our cold weather doesn’t mean the Earth isn’t heating up

Weather is not climate. This is worth remembering because it being cold and wet outside does not mean global warming has stopped. You can experience cold weather at the same time as global temperature records are being broken.

Few people in the UK enjoyed spring-like conditions in April. High-pressure systems were pulling in cold and dry air from the Arctic. At the same time, temperatures in large swathes of North America, Greenland, Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa were much higher.

So high, in fact, that April 2024 was the warmest April ever recorded. This continues an 11-month streak of record monthly temperatures. The last time that happened was 2015-16 – 2016 was the warmest year ever recorded.

Until last year, that is. In 2023 we noted an extraordinary series of temperatures on land and sea. September 2023 was 0.5°C warmer than the previous record holder of September 2020. Half a degree may not sound like very much, but in terms of changes in global average temperatures, it is a huge leap.

For many people in the UK, 2022 was the year that climate change came home. Thermometers in Coningsby, Lincolnshire, showed 40.3°C on 19 July.

Over the summer, the run of monthly temperature records may end. This is because the warming impacts of the natural El Niño process may fade. Every two to seven years, changes in the ocean’s currents lead to a transfer of heat from the Pacific to the atmosphere, and global temperatures go up. El Niño is certainly one factor behind this and last year’s remarkable increase in temperatures. But it can only explain a small part of it. By August or perhaps September, climate scientists will be able to say whether we will revert back to a more gradual trend of global warming. The alternative is that we may have missed crucial dynamics, and that the past 12 months is the beginning of something new.

If that means an acceleration of global warming towards worstcase scenarios, then it may be the beginning of the end when it comes to the survival of complex industrialised societies.

Some optimism can be found. What we think is normal can change a lot and comparatively fast.

We know that to avoid future catastrophes we must rapidly phase out fossil fuels, yet those calling for that are often labelled as dreamers. My hope is that in the future we will look back at such attitudes as strangely blinkered.

We would have won the battle against dangerous climate change, and think it odd that once there were people who believed we would knowingly destroy ourselves.