It’s been a frequent debating point from climate sceptics. Recent cold winders in Britain and Europe, they often say, undermine the case that the world is growing warmer. Scientists have tended to reply that that is to mix up the short-term effects of weather in a particular region with long term climate change, and that the cold winters therefore are of little significance.
But now new research suggests that both are wrong – that the icy weather is indeed evidence of change but that, counterintuitively, it reinforces the case for global warming rather than the reverse.
Research at Tokyo University and Japan’s national Institute of Polar Research – published in the current issue of […]