Go Green

Is this past winter’s warmth indicative of climate change? Well, yes and no.  Check out this great article looking at the data behind the recent heat shift. Their overall conclusion: the amount of variation is similar to past weather patterns, but the overall temperatures within those variations are higher than usual. So the heat wave itself is not so shocking as it might seem — but it does appear warmer than previously and indicates that we might see more of these extreme variations than we used to.

The first thing to remember is that weather is very different from climate. Weather is the local, current variation that happens, whereas climate is the large overall pattern and trend for an area. Weather can vary widely and dramatically without that meaning anything about the overall climate of an area. In other words, one REALLY cold month, doesn’t mean the weather is changing.  We’ve talked about this a bit before during the Tornado spat last year.

When we experience a week of really strange weather, that alone doesn’t tell us anything about potential climate shifts. However, if the climate were under threat of shifting, we would see more extreme, varied and unpredictable weather patterns more frequently. One weird weather event doesn’t tell us much, but many weird weather events is definitely suggestive of impending climate shifts