March, 2000: “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”

January 25th, 2026 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

…posted without comment:

The Independent, March 2000: “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past“


74 Responses to “March, 2000: “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past””

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  1. Willard says:
    January 25, 2026 at 11:59 PM

    The buried lede:

    The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London’s last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.

    A more authoritative source:

    The latest State of the UK Climate report shows that in the most recent decade (2011–2020) there have been 16% fewer days of air frost (when daily minimum temperature falls below 0 °C) and 14% fewer days of ground frost compared to the 1981–2010 average. There have been 25% fewer days of air frost and 20% fewer days of ground frost compared to 1961–1990.

    […]

    UKCP18 projects that the UK will experience warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers on average. Colder than average winters and summers will become less likely the further we go into the 21st century. A study that included an analysis of snow events found that what was a one-in-50-year snow event in a pre-industrial climate will have almost zero probability of occurring by the end of this century.

    Another study analysed the changing risk of high impact weather, including days of air frost. It found that as the global temperature increases, the average number of days of frost across the UK will decrease.

    https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/understanding-climate/uk-and-global-extreme-events-cold

    Reply
    • Ian Brown says:
      January 26, 2026 at 2:59 PM

      Three snow events already this winter in Northumberland,one in November,one in December and one two weeks ago which gave us 6 inches of level snow in places, more snow forecast for tomorrow, already had night temperatures below -10c , all normal , 2024/25 gave us 16 days when night temperatures never rose above -3c .

      Reply
    • Anon for a reason says:
      January 26, 2026 at 3:18 PM

      Dullard,
      The UK Met office is well known as being extreme with its views and poor with is data quality. So not really a universally accepted authority on anything.

      Reply
      • Kynqora says:
        January 26, 2026 at 4:12 PM

        Anon for a reason says:

        [“Dullard,
        The UK Met office is well known as being extreme with its views and poor with is data quality. So not really a universally accepted authority on anything.”]

        Setting aside the debate on UK thermometer quality, the evidence clearly shows that the UK is warming.

        During the Little Ice Age, the climate was cold enough for frost fairs to be held on the frozen Thames (although these events were infrequent even then). But, due to global warming, the river no longer freezes in a way that would allow such events to happen.

        If the trend continues, the UK could face more dramatic consequences, with significantly reduced snowfall being one of them.

      • Willard says:
        January 26, 2026 at 11:42 PM

        Anon for Q-related reasons is a well know troglodyte, e.g.:

        She [Renee Good, murdered by the ICE thugs he bootlicks] wasn’t much of a mum was she. Believing that she could stalk federal agents, impeded them in the duty etc

        Perhaps in that state they are so used to lived experience over facts might have contributed to death.

        https://www.drroyspencer.com/2026/01/uah-v6-1-global-temperature-update-for-december-2025-0-30-deg-c/#comment-1728191

        Perhaps our Anon’s opinion on what constitutes an authority can be discounted.

      • Anon for a reason says:
        January 27, 2026 at 12:24 AM

        Kynqora,
        Never said climate doesn’t change.

        What I do say is with atmospheric pollution being decreased, urban heat island effects, poor quality of data……
        Then the possibility of excessive climate change is slim to none.

        Currently the so called cure is a lot worse than the problem. But that’s what happens when you have billionaires funding their political dogma fuelled projects.

      • Kynqora says:
        January 29, 2026 at 9:19 AM

        Anon for a reason says:

        [“What I do say is with atmospheric pollution being decreased, urban heat island effects, poor quality of data……
        Then the possibility of excessive climate change is slim to none.”]

        I disagree with that interpretation. Measurement limitations don’t imply that warming is negligible. They only affect how precisely it can be quantified.

        Arctic sea ice extent, for instance, has declined substantially over the past ~50 yrs, reflecting a warming climate w/out involving UHI or station quality debates.

    • Matt says:
      January 27, 2026 at 11:38 AM

      No, the lead is quite clearly “Snow will be a thing of the past very soon”. You are changing the goalposts to something that would scare no one and people may even wonder exactly how it were a bad thing. The issue quite clearly is climate emergency, and the article is quite clearly alarmist to the extreme.

      Reply
      • Willard says:
        January 27, 2026 at 1:32 PM

        Oh, Matt.

        So you think that the article was about Antarctica?

        You can always remind all those imaginary people who wonder:

        Effects of climate change in the UK

        We’ve talked about how climate change might affect our climate and weather, with some very real and direct impacts.

        More extreme heat, for example, will be a risk to public health. More frequent heatwaves will put people at risk, particularly older people.

        Frequent and intense rainfall will cause an increase in flooding, which we will need to adapt to. We have all seen the devastation caused by flooding and how it can impact our lives.

        Considering how we manage our land, where we build our homes and how best to defend against flooding will be critical in the years to come.

        Already, the Government has pledged £5.2 billion for new flood and coastal defences by 2027. This money is part of the plan for a green industrial revolution, announced in November 2020.

        Climate change will impact farming, too. Some crops may be easier to grow, and the growing season will expand. More droughts, though, will disrupt the growing season. Some of crops we grow today may not be suited to higher temperatures, too.

        Find out more about the effects of climate change

        https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/climate-change/climate-change-in-the-uk

        I emphasized the relevant bits in case your imaginary friends have your attention span.

    • Mark Wapples says:
      February 3, 2026 at 4:07 AM

      Living in Yorkshire and approaching my 60th year I can remember about 6 pr 7 years that we have had any appreciable amount of snow.
      Two were in the 70s one was in the 80s two in the nineties, one in the 2000s and two since 2010.

      What strikes me is it isn’t anything to do with global warming, but entirely due to the position of the Jet stream, which ever ten or so years sits in just the right position to funnel cold air in to moist air to produce snow.

      This year since August it seems to be in the place where it funnels clouds over the UK especially in Yorkshire.

      A better prediction would be kids won’t see the sun in winter.

      Reply
      • Willard says:
        February 3, 2026 at 9:56 AM

        Back in my days, Yorkshire was part of Northern England, there was an important North-South divide, but now I’m not so sure:

        In the last 50 years or so, average summer temperatures here in Yorkshire have risen by 0.5C. That change will only accelerate without meaningful action.

        […]

        If global emissions of carbon dioxide continue unchecked, the Met Office projects that summer temperatures may rise by 4.4C by 2080.

        In reality, that means average July daytime temperatures in Leeds and Sheffield would approach 26C – currently described as a particularly hot day.

        At the same time, summer rainfall could drop by a quarter, so the weather conditions we experienced in summer 2018 – when temperatures soared and we faced a prolonged drought – would become normal.

        With a projected increase in winter rainfall, we would experience a climate that regularly swung from one extreme to the other.

        Such extreme swings would prove disastrous for thriving homes of birds and other wildlife, such as Ripon City Wetlands in North Yorkshire, which also acts as an important store of carbon.

        “It means a lot of the plants and other wildlife that really need these wet conditions will suffer and we could lose them,” says Jonathan Leadley from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.

        “We could see those species at the southerly end of their range here being pushed out of counties such as Yorkshire.”

        The wetlands have recently seen certain bird and dragonfly species breeding in Yorkshire for the first time ever, but this changing picture is a symptom of a dangerous trend.

        “We mustn’t forget that climate crisis is what’s bringing those southern species into the UK,” Mr Leadley says.

        Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-56836697

        Imagine being pushed out of Yorkshire. The calamity!

        Please don’t take this as a cue for a little xenophobia.

  2. Clint R says:
    January 26, 2026 at 10:36 AM

    An interesting quote from the article (bold my emphasis):

    Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6 C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2 C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.

    However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

    “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

    Reply
    • Ian Brown says:
      January 26, 2026 at 3:14 PM

      and what a pile of none sense that was, wonder what Hubert Lamb the founder of the CRU would have made of it, winter 2008/9 had 18 inches of snow in december in Northumberland with a night time low of -18c in my patch, -21 recorded five miles away in the village of Simonburn, then we had the famous beast from the East, it all makes a mockery of ,your kids will never know what snow is.

      Reply
    • Anon for a reason says:
      January 26, 2026 at 3:20 PM

      Clint,
      It’s with some irony that the CRU is located where they used to grow grapes in the middle ages, when it was warmer.

      Reply
    • Willard says:
      January 26, 2026 at 11:48 PM

      Ironic indeed:

      sneak in Junior)

      https://bsky.app/profile/andrewdessler.com/post/3md2q6vmzhs2v

      Reply
      • Ian Brown says:
        January 27, 2026 at 3:14 AM

        Willard, i quote Northumberland because that is where i live and gather my records from, the North South divide in England is well known, records show this climate difference has existed for centuries,the South coast is only a little over 20 miles from France, yes the UK has warmed but not so much that it has become mediterranean like, as some wise men suggest it would become .

      • Willard says:
        January 27, 2026 at 8:01 AM

        Ian,

        That contrarians jump on “snowfalls are now just a thing of the past” while omitting context is par for the Climateball course:

        The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London‘s last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.

        Op. Cit.

        You can track all the regions you like by saving the resource I just provided.

        ***

        It’s not hard to find outdoor rinks in London:

        https://london.ca/living-london/recreation/skating/outdoor-skating-rinks

        You might need to buy a plane ticket.

      • RLH says:
        January 28, 2026 at 11:20 AM

        “You might need to buy a plane ticket.”

        from the UK!

      • Willard says:
        January 28, 2026 at 1:49 PM

        See how easy it is to pick up on the context of a statement, Richard?

      • Anon for a reason says:
        January 30, 2026 at 7:21 AM

        Dullard,
        You reference London over a time frame. But London is a very large heat island that has increased in population and the amount of energy that is supplied in to the city. Don’t you think that your example is biased.

      • Willard says:
        January 30, 2026 at 9:35 AM

        Had our Anon for Q-related reasons clicked on the link, he’d see that I was talking about ice rinks in London, Ontario.

        He won’t be able to skate only by waving his arms.

      • Anon for a reason says:
        January 30, 2026 at 1:25 PM

        Dullard,
        Why would I ever click a link that you provided? You don’t appear to be trustworthy.

      • Willard says:
        January 31, 2026 at 12:29 AM

        Our Anon for Q-related reasons does not need to read anything to riff on “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”. Or on anything else, for that matter. His reactionary rants don’t need to have any real target: he went to the School for Dictators, and so participates in a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place.

  3. Thomas Hagedorn says:
    January 27, 2026 at 7:09 AM

    If you believe Trump at the WEF, THE UK is sitting on a lot of oil still left in the North Sea fields. I believe the Brits claim it is mostly depleted, but the argument is that they aren’t even trying to squeeze any more oil out of it because of warming concerns. Meanwhile, Northern Europe sits on huge shale deposits and closed many of its coal plants. Hope they enjoy shivering in their homes and apartments this winter. We’ be glad to sell them LNG all day long.

    The Prize, an amazing Pulitzer Prize winning history if the oil industry makes quite clear the vital importance of oil and gas to geopolitics.

    Reply
    • Ian Brown says:
      January 27, 2026 at 4:42 PM

      Plenty of oil gas and coal in the UK,but our so called patriotic governments are more interested in selling out to the highest bidder,new North Sea wind farms will sell power to any energy company with the deepest pockets and consumers pay the bill.and all the while the fact remains ,if the uk was emissions free the result on temperature would be impossible to measure, we are the only generation in British history going back over 1000years that think a warm period is something to be afraid of,historians called warm period golden ages a return to a climate regime that existed before 1850 would be a shock many would not survive, the climate propaganda machine has cost billions and improved no ones life, unelected quangos destroyed the best energy sector on the planet,and are replacing it with a system they say will save us all and change the climate, a system to change the climate that depends upon the right type of weather for its existence ,is sheer genius, we have a crisis, but it is not the climate that is in crisis.

      Reply
  4. Thomas Hagedorn says:
    January 28, 2026 at 12:30 PM

    https://www.wsj.com/opinion/winter-storm-fern-proves-grid-reliability-a-necessity-7d1a0ac8?st=r5ztkS&reflink=article_copyURL_share

    Dr Stephen Koonin had an excellent op ed in today’s Wall Street Journal about the importance of coal today and nuclear in the future when we experience extreme cold spells, like we currently are seeing in the US Midwest. This reminds me of the disaster that befell Texas a few years ago when all the wind turbines froze.

    Reply
    • Bindidon says:
      January 28, 2026 at 1:32 PM

      ” This reminds me of the disaster that befell Texas a few years ago when all the wind turbines froze. ”

      I thought I would owe an apology to Thomas Hagedorn because of my somewhat rude tones to him when he tells us things having zero point zero to do with the reality, thus simply lying.

      *
      I was grateful to him for his fair opinion about Berkeley Earth.

      But… he continues the old way, however.

      Let’s correct his utterly wrong view, probably more related to a visible WUWT trash affinity than to reality.

      *

      ” In February 2021, the state of Texas suffered a major power crisis, which came about during three severe winter storms sweeping across the United States on February 10–11, 13–17 (known as Winter Storm Uri), and 15–20.

      The storms triggered the worst energy infrastructure failure in Texas state history, leading to shortages of water, food, and heat. More than 4.5 million homes and businesses were left without power, some for several days. At least 246 people were killed directly or indirectly, with some estimates as high as 702 killed as a result of the crisis.

      State officials, including Republican governor Greg Abbott, initially erroneously blamed the outages on frozen wind turbines and solar panels.

      Data showed that failure to winterize traditional power sources, principally natural gas infrastructure but also to a lesser extent wind turbines, had caused the grid failure, with a drop in power production from natural gas more than five times greater than that from wind turbines.

      Texas’s power grid has long been separate from the two major national grids to avoid federal oversight, though it is still connected to the other national grids and Mexico’s; the limited number of ties made it difficult for the state to import electricity from other states during the crisis.

      Deregulation of its electricity market beginning in the 1990s resulted in competition in wholesale electricity prices, but also cost cutting for contingency preparation. ”

      *
      Yeah.

      Reply
    • Willard says:
      January 28, 2026 at 1:46 PM

      Teh Koonin had a better email the other day:

      On Thu, Jul 24, 2025 at 3:14 PM teh Koonin wrote:

      Got a similar call from Scott Waldmann, but let it go to voicemail.

      He said he wanted to speak on background about the endangerment finding and “some of the climate
      work” I’ve been doing.

      I’ve not returned his call.

      https://bsky.app/profile/bobkopp.net/post/3md2sshok3c2x

      Cunning Koonin!

      Reply
    • Thomas Hagedorn says:
      January 28, 2026 at 3:35 PM

      Bindi – You are correct that the nat gas capacity losses were greater than wind. Wind CAPACITY losses were significant, about 3/4 that of nat gas. However, the AVERAGE winds in Texas are lower in winter, so planners weren’t counting on as much wind. Then 1/2 that undependable capacity was frozen and put out of use.This is a very interesting and pertinent fact. Wind is undependable in a crisis like a cold snap. Nat gas, with proper engineering, is a dependable, on demand energy source. So is coal.

      Reply
    • Bindidon says:
      January 28, 2026 at 9:15 PM

      Feel free to continue dodging, diverting and misrepresenting, Hagedorn.
      I don’t want to waste my time with you.

      Reply
  5. Nate says:
    January 28, 2026 at 1:03 PM

    I don’t know if people noticed that the article Roy Spencer cited was discussing, specifically, snowfall in “lowland Britain”.

    Not in the highlands of Scotland, and not everywhere else in the world.

    Reply
    • Bad Andrew says:
      January 29, 2026 at 10:24 AM

      Nate,

      So you’re saying there’s no identifiable Climate Crises in lowland Britian.

      Reply
    • Nate says:
      January 30, 2026 at 6:22 AM

      Quote me saying that.

      The climate is warming. Winter is about 4 F warmer in Europe than 50 y ago.

      But winter still happens, and winter weather is still variable.

      Reply
    • Ian Brown says:
      January 31, 2026 at 11:24 AM

      True Nante,but the truth is, it snows somewhere on the UK lowlands almost every year, Willard mentioned London,and stated the last significant snowfall was in 1991, though it is true such events have decreased, what he said was untrue,hear are one or two snow events, 1994 at least three periods of heavy snow, Feb 2009. Major disruption all across the city, 2010 Christmas , one of the few times heavy snow occurred over the Christmas period . 2018 very heavy prolonged snow with severe drifting, the Met Office comically called it the beast from the east.they give everything a name these days. early January 2026, widespread snow ,especially on the out skirts.if Willard reads this,i have just booked another plane ticket, i thank him for the advice,

      Reply
  6. Gordon Robertson says:
    January 29, 2026 at 3:22 AM

    kynqora…”During the Little Ice Age, the climate was cold enough for frost fairs to be held on the frozen Thames (although these events were infrequent even then). But, due to global warming, the river no longer freezes in a way that would allow such events to happen”.

    ***

    The statement above is a true, Duh!!!, moment or a Homer Simpson, Doh!!! moment. That is, if you meant the global warming was produced by anthropogenic CO2.

    Global warming since the end of the LIA circa 1850, is a natural re-warming due to the LIA. The mother of all climate alarmists, the IPCC, have hilariously represented the rewarming as being due to a trace gas in the atmosphere whose warming ability is limited by the Ideal Gas Law to about 0.06C for every 1C of atmospheric warming.

    Since there has been roughly 1C warming since 1850, that means 0.94C was a re-warming from the LIA and 0.06C from CO2.

    This scam has gone far enough. During the 400+ years of the LIA, global temperature dropped 1C to 2C. There is no way Europe could have cooled that much while the rest of the planet did not. That version is part of the IPCC scam to explain away the obvious cooling presented by the LIA and limit it to cooling only in Europe.

    The Thames not only froze enough to support ice fairs the entire salt water oceans froze up to 2 miles offshore in part of northern Europe. The Baltic Sea froze over so badly in 1658 that the Swedish army was able to march across it and invade Denmark. And, of course, the Mer de Glace glacier in the French Alps extended so far down the Alps, it wiped out long established farms and villages in its path.

    The idea that such cold temperatures existed only in Europe is too dumb to consider.

    Reply
  7. Gordon Robertson says:
    January 29, 2026 at 3:40 AM

    With regard to snowfalls being a thing of the past anywhere, tell that to people in the central and eastern Canada and the US. You could get run out of town since they are currently experiencing record snowfall that is expected to be around a few weeks due to accompanying cold temps.

    As long as the Earth maintains its current orbit and axial tilt, the Arctic and Antarctic will freeze over each winter. When there is little or no sunlight for a good portion of the year, it gets mighty cold in the polar regions and frigid air from the stratosphere descends to lower levels. Due to the polar vortex, that frigid air often gets spread as far south as Florida and Texas, which is currently happening.

    When the colder polar air meets the warmer air from the Gulf of Mexico, snow and tornadoes get produced. We are currently seeing such effects in eastern Canada while the West coast is relatively balmy.

    Britain is warmed by the Gulf Stream as the northwest coast of the American continent is warmed by a similar current, the Japan Current. Britain in general has moderate temperatures due to the Gulf Stream although higher elevations in Scotland can get cold with lots of snow. Same for higher elevations in England and Wales.

    I don’t know what anyone is on about re snow in the UK since it is an oddity at best.

    Reply
    • Thomas Hagedorn says:
      January 30, 2026 at 6:17 AM

      Nice summary, sir. I believe the Japan current is a cooling current (it may have different name) once the coriolis effect turns it to the right off the Alaskan coast and it heads south along the Inside Passage, western Canadian coast. Stark contrast between the warm water US east coast beaches and the west coasts chillier beaches. A lot fewer folks venture into the waters and surfers wear wet suits.

      Reply
      • Gordon Robertson says:
        January 31, 2026 at 12:32 AM

        thomas…you’re right. the Japan current and the pineapple express are different phenomena although Google AI claims they both bring warm air.

        Google AI mistakenly calls both phenomena an atmospheric river, an idiotic term applied by an MIT professor who should have known better. Unless, of course, he was in a creative writing class where metaphors are better suited.

        Referring to water vapour, a gas, as a river is idiotic. Once the warm water vapour condenses, it can form larger droplets of water but still not a river, which is a cohesive amalgam of water molecules that flows as a unit. If any amount of water molecules formed so much as a droplet of water, its mass would be attracted via gravity to the surface. It might get blown around a bit but it would have a vertical descent.

        I suspect the author of the term atmospheric river was a climate alarmist who had a penchant for scaring people, causing them to believe that an actual river of water was flowing through the atmosphere, an impossibility due to the mass involved, and gravity.

        Even heavy cloud is not droplets of water large enough to be called rain. Google AI explains…”Water vapour in clouds precipitates into rain when tiny water droplets, formed by condensation around particles like dust or smoke, collide and coalesce to grow too heavy for cloud updrafts to hold, causing them to fall to the Earth due to gravity”.

        However, the term atmospheric river reveals how willing modern scientists are to embrace cute phrases while ignoring the reality they present. That is the basis of alarmist climate science, they think it’s cute to create and agree with any pseudo-science that earns them money.

  8. martinitony says:
    January 30, 2026 at 9:04 AM

    Question for those of you with statistical analysis background.

    I live in Central Ohio. We are experiencing weather very similar to the late 70s i.e. Plenty of snow. temperatures 20 degrees below average for now 7 days and projected to continue for another 2 weeks. I would suggest that a period of say 20-25 days with such weather would be a period of time and weather that lies beyond 2 deviations from the mean of temperature, if we accept recent, say past 25 years averages, as the mean. At what point do we say, perhaps three deviations from mean, that the last 25 years is not likely to represent typical climate/weather?

    Does such a period of time for, I assume, a large area of the country, suggest reevaluation of recent climate concerns? Or, is this just weather and not representative of climate?

    Reply
    • Bindidon says:
      January 30, 2026 at 7:34 PM

      martinitony

      ” We are experiencing weather very similar to the late 70s i.e. Plenty of snow. temperatures 20 degrees below average for now 7 days and projected to continue for another 2 weeks. ”

      Which period do you mean the average of?

      I had no idea of what is ‘Central Ohio’, and Google, asked, replied with a map of Columbus and surroundings.

      I searched thus for GHCN daily stations about 2 degrees around the city, found about 80 stations, and here are the TMIN/TMAX series of anomalies wrt the mean of 1981-2010:

      https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ieJLGmAc698x-sOhl6V85zp-2d2UXJWc/view

      *
      An interesting station in this tiny CONUS subset was

      USC00335857 39.7333 -82.2156 271.3 OH NEW LEXINGTON 2 NW

      because it looked a bit away from the typical UHI infested corners:

      https://tinyurl.com/New-Lexington

      and had since 1942 full monthly data available for anomaly construction.

      Same time series for this station:

      https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F_B0IpMUe0CSxskajNmcPRaleRdg2vPI/view

      *
      Here is the top 20 of an ascending sort of the January anomalies for New Lexington:

      1977 1 -8.20 (°C)
      2014 1 -6.12
      1968 1 -5.43
      1994 1 -5.34
      2009 1 -4.67
      1978 1 -4.48
      2025 1 -4.28
      1982 1 -4.16
      1963 1 -3.80
      2022 1 -3.66
      2018 1 -3.51
      1970 1 -3.37
      1988 1 -3.31
      1981 1 -3.20
      2011 1 -3.13
      1961 1 -2.96
      2003 1 -2.88
      2026 1 -2.74
      1979 1 -2.42
      2000 1 -2.23

      Tmin trends for New Lexington in °C / decade

      since 1950: 0.15 +- 0.03
      since 1979: 0.18 +- 0.06
      since 2000: 0.40 +- 0.15
      since 2010: 0.63 +- 0.35

      Tmax

      since 1950: -0.13 +- 0.03
      since 1979: 0.09 +- 0.07
      since 2000: 0.34 +- 0.17
      since 2010: 0.51 +- 0.37

      *
      I’m neither a meteorologist nor a climatologist.

      But imho, what you currently experience, so crazy and harsh it might appear (we have ‘only’ -10 °C this night near Berlin, Germoney): I see no need for any ‘reevaluation of recent climate concerns’ in your corner.

      Reply
      • martinitony says:
        January 31, 2026 at 4:23 AM

        Thank you for the reply and the research.

        Let me try to state my question differently.
        If we believe that a global warming has taken place over the last period of years based on observations over that time, say 40 years, and then we have a period of time now, say 30 days, where there is a temperature average that is some deviation from the mean for that 30 day period average, (say it lies 3 standard deviations from the mean), at what point do I say my observations and calculations of the mean are not correct.
        Suppose, for example, that in Central Ohio and perhaps a far greater area of this part of USA, the deviation for the average temperature as calculated over the past century is 2-3 deviations from the mean, say a 1 in 200 event, then does that suggest something about my observations and calculations to date?

        Here is an example of what I am driving at. On a PBS show, Nova, I believe (perhaps 30-40 years ago), the topic was water shed amounts of the Colorado River. They had believed when they built Hoover dam that there were an average of acre feet that fell in the watershed of the river based on calculations over a few decades . However, later studies demonstrated that they were off by a significant factor because the deviations from the mean were far greater when studied over centuries. (I believe they were able to learn more accurate rain fall by some technique that involved bristalcone pines)

        So, if the true mean temperatures of Earth, are likewise very different when studied over many centuries versus just the last century or so of observations, then how do we really know if the Earth is warming or cooling or static?

      • Nate says:
        January 31, 2026 at 6:29 AM

        I live in Massachusetts. We also had a retro cold and snowy January.

        But looking at the data it seems within about one SD.

        Here are the Ohio January average temperature values.

        https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/statewide/time-series/33/tavg/1/1/1960-2025?trend=true&trend_base=10&begtrendyear=1960&endtrendyear=2025

        A warming trend, but large variations.

      • Nate says:
        January 31, 2026 at 8:07 AM

        Maybe within 2 SD..

      • Bindidon says:
        January 31, 2026 at 6:55 PM

        martinitony

        Thanks in turn for your reply which however was not so helpful because you keep saying things without any actual reference to data.

        And you did not reply to my first question:

        “temperatures 20 degrees below average for now 7 days and projected to continue for another 2 weeks. ”

        *
        Twenty degrees below average for seven days? Where did that happen in your corner, and which average do you exactly mean?

        Here is the daily Tmin data recorded by the GHCN daily station ‘OH New Lexington’ for 2026, January 1-31:

        2026 1 1 -10.0 (°C)
        2026 1 2 -12.2
        2026 1 3 -11.1
        2026 1 4 -10.0
        2026 1 5 -7.2
        2026 1 6 -7.2
        2026 1 7 -1.1
        2026 1 8 -3.9
        2026 1 9 -3.9
        2026 1 10 0.6
        2026 1 11 -1.1
        2026 1 12 -3.3
        2026 1 13 -5.6
        2026 1 14 -2.8
        2026 1 15 -10.0
        2026 1 16 -10.0
        2026 1 17 -8.3
        2026 1 18 -8.9
        2026 1 19 -10.0
        2026 1 20 -16.1
        2026 1 21 -16.1
        2026 1 22 -8.3
        2026 1 23 -6.1
        2026 1 24 -16.7
        2026 1 25 -16.7
        2026 1 26 -12.8
        2026 1 27 -20.0
        2026 1 28 -25.6
        2026 1 29 -26.1
        2026 1 30 -23.9
        2026 1 31 -23.9

        *
        I agree that if we look, to first make it quite simple, for all January days in Lexington and sort them, we see 2026 at postition 3 of 85, on tie with 1948:

        2014 1 29 -30,0
        1963 1 29 -29,4
        1948 1 29 -26,1
        2026 1 29 -26,1
        2000 1 29 -24,4
        1977 1 29 -22,8
        2022 1 29 -22,2
        1966 1 29 -21,7
        1965 1 29 -20,0
        1961 1 29 -19,4

        But if we sort, for Central OHIO, the data collected by 338 available stations around Columbus (including those not selected for anomaly construction), we obtain for January days the following top:

        USC00334672 OH_LOGAN______________________ 1994 1 19 -38.3 (°C)
        USC00335310 OH_MILLIGAN___________________ 1912 1 13 -38.3
        USC00332044 OH_DANVILLE_2_W_______________ 1994 1 19 -37.2
        USC00334672 OH_LOGAN______________________ 1994 1 20 -37.2
        USC00335297 OH_MILLERSBURG________________ 1994 1 20 -37.2
        USC00335857 OH_NEW_LEXINGTON_2_NW_________ 1994 1 19 -37.2
        USC00332044 OH_DANVILLE_2_W_______________ 1994 1 20 -36.7
        USC00335297 OH_MILLERSBURG________________ 1994 1 19 -36.7
        USC00335315 OH_MILLPORT_4_NE______________ 1994 1 19 -36.7
        USC00332160 OH_DENNISON_WATER_WORKS_______ 1994 1 20 -36.1

        2026 appears first at position 43; of the first 100 entries, 52 are in the year 1994, and… 2 in 2026:

        USC00337935 OH_SPRINGFIELD_NEW_WTR_WKS____ 2026 1 30 -33.9
        USC00337935 OH_SPRINGFIELD_NEW_WTR_WKS____ 2026 1 31 -33.9

        *
        So please tell us when it gets far worse in your Central Ohio in the near future…

        *
        Please allow for two final remarks:

        – It’s not so long time ago (January 2019) that a harsh cold wave came over Northeast CONUS, with temperatures around -30 °C in Detroit, MI, Chicago, IL and around -40 were recored at Mt Carroll, IL:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January%E2%80%93February_2019_North_American_cold_wave

        this is long forgotten.

        – Why do some CONUS people always talk about cooling times with 20 degrees below average, but never bother about warming times with 20 degrees above average, what happens so often in the Arctic regions from Alaska over Scandinavia till Siberia?

        **
        At the end of your reply, you wrote:

        ” So, if the true mean temperatures of Earth, are likewise very different when studied over many centuries versus just the last century or so of observations, then how do we really know if the Earth is warming or cooling or static? ”

        martinitony, there were a lot of evaluations of historical climate, some reaching back to AD 0, e.g. PAGES2K, which I downloaded years ago:

        https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QNmA5_rTVCHEOCo87TcPvmuB2GO_jiSV/view

        They are all discredited and denigrated by the usual ‘skeptic’s.

        I compared the PAGES2K series’ end to HadCRUT (also discredited and denigrated by the same people), and UAH for the lower troposphere:

        https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H3mDVGgtHXG4Nct8LM9qcB85jnM1U_v1/view

        *
        Draw your own conclusions…

    • Thomas Hagedorn says:
      January 31, 2026 at 9:11 AM

      Martinitony – It sounds like you are fairly new to these discussions. In live in Cincinnati, about 100 miles southwest from central Ohio (Columbus area). I am 77 and except for two years, have lived in this area my whole life. Yes, this long term very cold spell is reminiscent of ‘77 and ‘78. We also had a period when I was a teenager (?) in the 60s when we had snow on the ground for about 6 weeks. A lot of rivers are freezing over. I saw a picture of the Ohio River (a major river in the eastern U.S.) freezing over. People walked on the Ohio in ‘77 – ‘78. I think a dare devil drove across it.

      But weather is not climate, or so says my 4th grade grandchild’s textbook (literally). I personally do not think that warming (global temps definitely are) is anywhere close to the scale or magnitude that we should be concerned. But I refuse to use the tactics that warming alarmists use to make major changes to the world’s economy, shut off growth to emerging nations, endanger the reliability of our electrical grid and obtain research funding. This cold period is weather, not climate, even as extreme as it is.

      For example, If this were a heat wave, like the one that hit Arizona a few years ago, scientists, news media, and politicians would be screaming from the rooftops about intensifying global warming. And in fact, they were. Yet if you look at climate records for any given Arizona weather station, you don’t see anything unusual about that summer.

      Global temps spiked until just recently. But it was only a two year period. Now we are cooling. Several factors other than greenhouse gases may have been the cause. Yet the alarmists claim this represents an acceleration of warming.

      The many factors that can go into changes in temperature averages (30 year normals, say) are really mind boggling. We know a lot and learn more about them every day, but at the end of the day, we can’t explain how they interact very well, despite what many claim.

      Reply
      • Eldrosion says:
        February 1, 2026 at 5:18 AM

        “I personally do not think that warming (global temps definitely are) is anywhere close to the scale or magnitude that we should be concerned.”

        How do you objectively define ‘anywhere close to the scale or magnitude that should be concerning’?

      • Thomas Hagedorn says:
        February 1, 2026 at 6:28 AM

        Eldrosion – I just spent way too much time trying to respond and then I lost my post while trying to post some links. So, basically, I believe after roughly 150 years of significant use of oil and gas, we should be seeing significant effects to be concerned. Where are they? A couple degree increase in temperature? I will see a lot more than that once the sun rises. Assuming I could perceive it, if that bothered me (I don’t know how, since the rise per decade is measured in fractions of a degree) I could move north 100 miles or so. But apparently, people here at 39N prefer warming weather, since many of my neighbors vacation, winter, or move to warmer climes. People aren’t moving away from the coasts (including well known celebrities and politicians who are braving the rising waters). Call that subjective if you like. I prefer to call it the wisdom of crowds.

        I refer you to the DOE Climate Working Group report from this July (an earlier post by Dr Roy has a link). I also refer you to a report by the company of the current DOE Secretary:

        https://libertyenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Bettering-Human-Lives-2024-Web-Liberty-Energy.pdf

        These are objective answers to the latest IPCC reports.

        The models are irrelevant to my thinking for two reasons. 1) they are speculative and vary wildly in their results fir several reasons and 2) after 150 years, if we are in serious trouble due to CO2 and warming it should already be obvious – subjectively to most individuals and objectively to those actors who are still objective (small in number).

      • Eldrosion says:
        February 1, 2026 at 8:32 AM

        Thomas, it is easy to take comfort in the seemingly small changes in climate and conclude that there is nothing to worry about.

        But global warming is FAR from over, and it will continue to warm long after our lifetimes. Many feedbacks to an increasing positive energy imbalance (the equilibrium response) take centuries to fully play out. Ice sheet melt and permafrost thaw are examples of these slow feedbacks.

        Also, keep in mind, the radiative forcing from greenhouse gas concentrations is still ongoing.

        There are also tipping points we have yet to cross that directly contradict your statement:

        “After 150 years, if we are in serious trouble due to CO2 and warming, it should already be obvious — subjectively to most individuals and objectively to those who are still objective (a small number).”

        One clear example is the potential for massive sea level rise resulting from melting in Greenland and West Antarctica. Such changes could be catastrophic, yet they unfold on timescales much longer than what most people can perceive today.

      • Thomas Hagedorn says:
        February 1, 2026 at 12:54 PM

        Eldrosion – Your points are well taken. My problem with them is since some of the more near term predictions have not come about during the last 150 years, I don’t have much confidence in predictions that reach multiple generations into the future. If you are correct, they will develope very, very slowly and man will have plenty of time to adapt quite easily, as he has in the past and even does today. Native peoples survive quite well in the arctic north, as well as in the jungles of the tropics. And that was without all the wonders that modern technology has brought us since the enlightenment and the onset of the Industrial Revolution. The cost today of preparing for or trying to prevent potential problems from warming far outweighs the benefit, in my opinion. We have already paid a very big price in seeking an impossible goal – net zero – but it looks like we may be on the way to turning that mistake around.

  9. Gordon Robertson says:
    January 31, 2026 at 12:45 AM

    a bit back, Ball4 whined to Christos…

    “Christos, it takes the sun shining thru added ppm CO2 and other IR active gas to warm the lower atm. regions as shown in part by top post”.

    ***

    B4 seems to think that broad-spectrum solar is only absorbed by CO2 and other IR active gases. The truth is that all atmospheric gases can and do absorbed broad-spectrum solar energy and warm by absorbing it. Ergo, warming of the atmosphere by incoming solar is due by 99.94% to warming by nitrogen and oxygen.

    You won’t find that science in the alarmist AGW manual.

    Reply
    • Willard says:
      January 31, 2026 at 10:06 AM

      Wrong thread, in fact wrong blog to discuss Sky Dragon crap.

      Here’s a list of topics cantankerous troglodytes might need to perfect instead:

      – No one wants to work, all bent on pleasure seeking.

      – Women becoming masculine, men feminine

      – Popular music is incredibly stupid

      – Modern life too fast

      – Modern life too soft

      – Women read too many sex novels

      – More parking space badly needed

      – Too few umbrellas

      – Nobody wants to work at marriage anymore

      – Women today are too educated

      – Young men today are lazy

      – Dogs are becoming soft, too

      – Young people have it too easy

      Vintage 1926:

      https://bsky.app/profile/paulisci.bsky.social/post/3mdq3jmzz522h

      Reply
      • Ian Brown says:
        January 31, 2026 at 11:34 AM

        Some of that is true Willard, the toughest people alive in the UK today were all born in the 1950s or before, people born in those times very rarely close their bedroom windows in winter during the day today, central heating in the bedroom is a no no,almost every child in the fifties could feed themselves and build things for their own amusement,

      • Willard says:
        February 1, 2026 at 9:35 AM

        They’re more judgments than factual claims, Ian, even the one about umbrellas. The persons for whom they were true in 1926 were definitely adults in the 1950s. Let’s not mind these details. You’re right: the children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

        Just take young Liam. The media outcry over this brilliant gambit is utterly overplayed. The nerves it takes to humanize his predicament because of a silly blue hat and a Spider-Man backpack. We should see him as the honorable man he will become, serving his country by knocking on doors. Just like in Herod’s time.

        Those were the days!

        Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

  10. angech says:
    February 1, 2026 at 5:59 AM

    Arctic sea ice lowest at start of year but now up to 4 th lowest and may make 20 th lowest within 6 weeks.
    Willard is getting old, grey and repetitive.
    Sorry, only getting old and grey.
    It was snowing in England in the year he was born, all through his life and will no doubt continue for thousands of years until continental drift takes England to the equator.

    Reply
  11. Gordon Robertson says:
    February 1, 2026 at 7:21 AM

    Roy’s recent post about the fairly tale Tropical hotpot seem to have died with the last post Jan 22nd. However, he made an important point…

    ***

    “The excessive warming of the tropical troposphere is no doubt related to inadequacies in how the models handle convective overturning in the tropics, that is, organized thunderstorm activity that transports heat from the surface upward. That “deep moist convection” redistributes not only heat energy, but clouds and water vapor…”.

    ——-

    “Maybe if the modelers figured out why their handling of moist convection is flawed, models would then produce warming more in line with observations, and more in line with each other”.

    ***

    We know why their convection theory is flawed, they did not study the Ideal Gas Law, never mind the part of the IGL written by Dalton on partial pressures.

    Heat transported vertically by convection in the Tropics is sourced directly from the surface via conduction/convection and direct heating by incoming solar energy. Convection of that kind involves all gases in the atmosphere of which 99% is nitrogen and oxygen.

    Dalton’s Law tells us that the heat contributed by each gas heated by the surface and by solar energy contributes to the overall temperature according the mass percent of that gas.

    PV = nRT

    The ‘n’ is the mass of the gas and the ‘n’ of CO2 is about 0.06% of the total mass while the mass of N2/O2 is roughly 99%. If you work it out wrt temperature, it means CO2 contributes about 0.06C per overall temperature increase of 1C while N2/O2 contributes 0.94C.

    If you treat each gas independently with the IGL, it becomes obvious atthe same atitude that T coming from CO2 molecules is a tiny fraction of T derived from N2/O2. The ratio is roughly 0.06/99 where 0.06 is the mass percent of CO2 and 99 is the mass percent of N2/O2.

    For anyone claiming the IGL does not apply in the atmosphere, in the immortal words of the Rolling Stones ‘Jumping Jack Flash is a gas, gas, gas’. So is CO2, N2, and O2. Wherever gas hang out in close proximity, the IGL applies.

    Ergo, if their is a hot spot high in the Tropical sky, just about all of it came via N2 and O2.

    Modelers think the only way heat can be created or dissipated in the atmosphere is via GHGs. That is sheer nonsense. Most surface heat is dissipated via convection involving the majority gases of N2/O2.

    The reason is obvious, there are roughly 10^28 air molecules per square metre in direct contact with the surface and each one absorbs heat directly from the surface. Shula proved via the pyranometer that this direct transfer of heat to the atmosphere is 260 times more effective at heat dissipation than radiation. However, the models are programmed with the opposite propaganda, that radiation is mainly responsible for heat dissipation and convection is a minor player.

    If a model is dependent on the AGW theory, the basis of which is that trace gases are heating the atmosphere, then that model will always be false.

    Reply
    • Willard says:
      February 1, 2026 at 10:47 AM

      Good Sir,

      Once again you are trying to peddle Sky Dragon crap. This isn’t the thread, nor the blog for this.

      May I interest you in becoming a reactionary centrist instead:

      [VOLTS] We’re here because we want to discuss reactionary centrism, which is a concept and idea that’s been floating around a lot lately among leftist critics of what’s going on these days. But as far as I have been able to tell, there’s no clear place to send people when they ask, “What is reactionary centrism? What does that mean?” No one’s done a straightforward laying out of what it is, what we’re talking about. There’s a lot of oblique references, etc.We should say that the term, as far as we know, goes back to — Aaron Huertas.

      […]

      [Michael] It does dovetail a little bit with your audience, because he was a climate activist and he presented the concept specifically in relation to climate politics, where there are these people who are officially on the left, believe that climate change is real, yet they dedicate all of their public energy to scolding the left, excoriating the left. “The left has gone too far. Left solutions will not work.” If you look at the totality of their work, you wouldn’t get the sense that climate change itself is a problem. You would get the sense that climate change activists are a problem.This has then spread into almost every issue that we have. I would say this is the dominant ideology of intellectual elites in America. This idea that both sides are to blame for everything, that we have to dedicate roughly 50/50 time to the excesses of the left as we do to the excesses of the right, oftentimes dedicating more energy to the excesses of the left than the excesses of the right.

      https://www.volts.wtf/p/all-about-reactionary-centrism

      Since you keep punching hippies while presenting yourself as a socialist, you could fit right into the role!

      What say you?

      Reply
      • Ian Brown says:
        February 2, 2026 at 5:17 PM

        Is what he said any worse than the climate crap that comes out the UK think tanks and climate committees almost every day,

      • Willard says:
        February 3, 2026 at 9:41 AM

        Why the trick question, Ian?

        Please don’t make me work for your deflection.

      • Ian Brown says:
        February 3, 2026 at 2:54 PM

        It was a statement, not a question Willard, i remember Tony Blairs science advisor making a fool of himself ,The UK will have a Mediterranean climate he said,so gullible southerners filled their gardens with succulents and herbaceous perennials from Spain,some planted potatoes in February, most did not survive the spring, today we have Farmer who has invested a lot of money in the cultivation of olives, i wish him well, but i fear the climate might be his biggest enemy.very heavy snow again tonight in parts of Northumberland.

      • Willard says:
        February 3, 2026 at 4:30 PM

        It was neither a real question nor a real statement, Ian. It was a rhetorical question. It was pure deflection, so not a real statement.

        If the UK turns Mediterranean, what will become of the Mediterranean region?

  12. MFA says:
    February 2, 2026 at 2:06 PM

    Unfortunately, Dr. Spencer, at a warming rate of +0.22 C/decade over land, Charles Onians will *eventually* be proved correct.

    Unless of course as a byproduct the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation stops, in which case snowfall in the UK may eventually return to what it was 33,000 years ago, when the glaciers overran the country.

    Good luck to your descendants, everybody!

    Reply
  13. angech says:
    February 3, 2026 at 1:13 AM

    Dr Spencer
    Hoping to be able to comment on this site but do not seem able to get messages through. Is it a moderation issue?

    Reply
  14. angech says:
    February 3, 2026 at 1:18 AM

    I have a new email angechx@gmail.com can this be verified so I can comment please

    Reply
  15. Thomas P says:
    February 3, 2026 at 3:20 AM

    From the same article: “Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.”

    Reply
  16. Ian Brown says:
    February 3, 2026 at 2:55 PM

    It was a statement, not a question Willard, i remember Tony Blairs science advisor making a fool of himself ,The UK will have a Mediterranean climate he said,so gullible southerners filled their gardens with succulents and herbaceous perennials from Spain,some planted potatoes in February, most did not survive the spring, today we have Farmer who has invested a lot of money in the cultivation of olives, i wish him well, but i fear the climate might be his biggest enemy.very heavy snow again tonight in parts of Northumberland.

    Reply
  17. Christos Vournas says:
    February 7, 2026 at 1:52 AM

    Earth is warmer than Moon, because Earth rotates faster, and because Earth is covered with water (oceans).
    Atmosphere is very thin to play a role in surface warming.
    –
    https://www.cristos-vournas.com

    Reply

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