Siberia and China forget global warming.

Last week the temperature in Siberia was reported have dropped to minus 58C (-72F), which by anyone's reckoning is pretty cold. But this was supposed to be a world gripped by Global Warming? So how come that Siberia has yet to latch on to this idea?

Oh but wait!! If this isn't Global warming then ... you guessed it!! It has to be good old Climate Change. Except... and its a pretty big except - this is Siberia we're talking about and although the temperature has been pretty cold it's only just a couple of degrees below normal for this time of the year, in a part of the world that has always been renowned for its winter cold. In other words nothing terribly unusual.

But Siberia was not the only place on Earth to forget to adhere to the universally accepted idea of Global Warming. Areas of China for example experienced their worst winter snowfalls for over a decade and it seemed that whatever else was happening the image of a world enshrouded by heat trapping clouds of carbon dioxide was a long way from the stark reality of the actual situation.

Once again it showed that despite the politically hyped rhetoric nature has its own agenda to maintain, and one that we humans interpret or misinterpret to our own interest or ignore at our peril.

A nation divided

The third week of 2008 saw some areas of the British Isles treated to some of their warmest January temperatures on record. In particular the South of England was supposed to have experienced its warmest ever night for this time of the year and the exponents of Global Warming were positively hooping for joy at the anomaly of temperatures that reached 15 centigrade in the English capital London.

But not so fast. Barely two hundred miles farther north conditions of heavy frost prevailed as people made their way to work in the freezing morning cold and to all intents and purposes it seemed that the British Isles were cut in two between very distinct temperature gradients.

But what lay behind this contrast? Was it shifting bands of carbon dioxide? Or was it the inexorable march towards Climate Change in all of its impenetrable complexity?

As always the truth was quite easily demonstrated. As the image below quite aptly shows the differing temperature variations were solely a result of the wind patterns that were dominant at that particular time. For example the south of England was subject to a southerly wind flow that came up from the tropics whereas the north was clearly influenced by the jet stream that came plunging down from the north.

As ever not much of a mystery and certainly not one that might involve those mythical clouds of swirling carbon dioxide.