THE March and April cold weather produced a ‘told you so’ from those who don’t believe we humans are causing the climate to warm. They’re wrong, and they need to accept what’s been happening to the world temperature, with the inevitable warming oceans and melting ice.

They need a global view, not a few days experience on a small island off the western coast of an enormous landmass.

They should accept that 2017 was the third year in a row setting new warm global temperature records, that the polar sea ice extent was the lowest since satellite coverage began almost fifty years ago, and Greenland permafrost melting was at record levels.

Indeed polar temperatures were up by at least six degrees, with the figures above freezing on nine separate days this year even though it was still winter dark.

The north pole normally has a very marked low pressure system above it, high in the sky, with a dominant higher pressure close to surface level. This did lead to what’s called the polar vortex, a circulating air mass over the polar area, but that’s now changing as the melting sea ice and Greenland glaciers mean that the ocean surface now has much more fresh, and warmer, less dense water, and so it’s beginning to stay there rather than sinking.

It can result in the high pressure over the polar area splitting into two, allowing more warm air in, and so more melting. Additionally because the less dense surface water is no longer sinking and dragging in the warm North Atlantic Drift from the Caribbean there are real signs that this major current, the one that warms western Europe, is now weakening.

So it’s possible that coastal Europe may not warm up as much as the rest of the globe, but it’ll certainly be a changing climate, though not always like 2018.