November UK snow doesn’t disprove global warmingpublished at 12:03 GMT
12:03 GMT
Marco Silva
BBC Verify senior journalist
Image source, PA Media
Snowfall in parts of the UK in the last two days has led some social media users to falsely claim that cold weather disproves climate change.In posts seen thousands of times, some users asked “what happened to all that global warming?” with others ironically suggesting it is “hitting England hard”.
But these comments confuse weather with climate. While weather refers to short-term changes in the atmosphere, climate describes long-term weather patterns over extended periods.
“Despite the warming climate, extreme cold events still occur in the UK due to natural variability,” says Dr Mark McCarthy, head of climate attribution at the Met Office.
“Future UK winter climate will still be variable year to year, so severely cold winters are still likely to occur – just less often.”
The World Meteorological Organization says that, since the 1980s, each decade has been warmer than the previous one – a trend that is expected to continue.
It also says that 2025 is likely to be the second or third warmest year on record, with average temperatures between January and August 1.42C above levels of the late 1800s.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says this is “unequivocally” being caused by human activity — mainly through the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas