More snow (in Gland)

It's been cold-cold-cold for the last two weeks. Most of the Boreal hemisphere completely covered with snow, and not going to get any warmer for some more time. Aerial pictures (grazie MiKo) show Europe and North America as they probably used to look like during some past ice age.

As unavoidable as the raisins in the panettone, there come the climate change skeptics (like here) with the traditional snowfall-argument: "we are experiencing one of the harshest winter ever recorder, the world just can't be getting any warmer". I don't know if these people are in good faith. For sure, a single, localized meteorological event, even an extended one such as this cold spell, doesn't define global climatic trends. Confusing the two levels is like thinking that every sheep is black just because the only sheep you've ever seen was. Or better, in this case, it's more like forgetting the 457 white sheep you've seen so far to only consider the last one, which was black.

In the meanwhile, the Austral hemisphere has just experienced the hottest year on records, half a °C warmer than the 1950-1980 average.

- The southern hemisphere is mostly covered by water, which has a much less variable temperature than the land (one of the reasons why the weather in Napoli is way lovelier than, say, Ankara), and is a much more reliable indicator of a worldwide trend;

- while during 1998 (the hottest year so far), warming related to El Niño had been especially significant, last year it was been negligible, which probably means that global warming accounted for most of this temperature increase.

One more white sheep. Let's try not to fall asleep.