Cold weather v climate change

Many people are suggesting that the current long spell of very cold weather in the UK  means  that global warming has ended.

This ill-informed  thinking highlights how much confusion there is about: :

The difference between weather and climate.

Weather is caused by disturbances within the atmosphere, but climate is controlled by external influences, such as the distribution of oceans and continents, the extent of ice and snow-cover, variations in the amount of energy from the sun, and changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

Climate is the underlying average, or if the climate is changing it is the underlying trend, whereas weather is the noise in the system.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/Just_5_Questions_Weather-vs-climate20100628.html

The effects of a changing climate is the reason why the  UK is experiencing a prolonged period of “noisy” cold weather at the moment . This is the result of changes to the extent of ice at the poles which in turn is seriously shifting the air currents that circulate around our planet. Looking higher into the atmosphere is increasingly being used to predict our weather patterns.

http://phys.org/news/2013-01-higher-cold-weather.html

This post was written by:

- who has written 872 posts on My Climate Change Garden.

I am not an experienced gardener - more of an enthusiastic amateur who learns by trial and error and who is keen to "manage" the effects of shifting weather patterns on my garden. Writing this blog is my passion and it has evolved over 12 years to inspire engagement with climate change outside our back doors, in our personal gardens and green spaces. My mission is to fertilise and expand this platform to grow a community of global gardeners communicating about the effects of climate change on our plants and exploring how each individual can make small changes in our lives to become more sustainable. The future of our gardens and #OurPlanet is in our hands - please plant your own seeds for our collective sustainable future.

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