In alarmist imaginations, January 2025 was ‘hottest on record’; in reality, it was darned cold

by J. Robson, March 12, 2025 in ClimateRealistsofBritishColumbia


We continue to be baffled by alarmist claims that the long, cold winter of 2024-25 did not happen, is not happening, and must not happen.

Sometimes things occur that surprise us and run contrary to our general understanding of the world, but when they do we notice them and admit them. (Under which heading file that thus far in 2025 Arctic sea ice extent is at its lowest in a decade, the opposite of 2024.)

But what are we to make of “The Science Behind the Hottest January on Record: What It Means for the Future” or “The Impact of Record-Breaking January Temperatures on Global Climate Trends”?

In fact, as we reported recently, the best available satellite data shows a sharp drop in temperature in January. And we recently learned that Ottawa “just had its coldest February since February 2015.” In which it is far from alone, with harsh conditions from here to Central Asia. And we’re not out of the snowy woods yet. But who are you going to believe, data, headlines or your own eyes and frosty toes?

DESPERATELY SEEKING EXPLANATIONS…

If they do admit that it’s happening, and they look a bit silly trying not to, they produce an explanation-like object that lacks a certain rigour. For instance a piece on the topic in the Hindustan Times (oh what a globalized world we live in as MSN delivers us the Delhi take on cold in Timmins) explains that:

“After last month’s polar vortex collapse, a second one is expected to unleash freezing conditions across North America. With the winter weather phenomenon predictions eyeing a mid-March comeback, parts of Canada and the United States could be submerged in deep freezes, possibly even impacting travel as was seen in the previous cycle. The UK and Europe may also end up facing the brunt of the extreme winter weather.”

OK, so what’s with the dreaded warming? Well, the piece goes on for a while about how weird stuff is happening weirdly:

Is Arctic Amplification an Averaging Error?

by K. Hansen, Apr 15, 2025 in WUWT


Looking over one of my earlier essays, I found a note pointing to a very interesting journal paper whose findings raised an important question.  The paper is not new, it is almost a  decade old:  “Spatiotemporal Divergence of the Warming Hiatus over Land Based on Different Definitions of Mean Temperature”; Zhou & Wang (2016) [ pdf here ].

The paper was looking into this issue, as stated in the introduction:

“Despite the ongoing increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases, the global mean surface temperature (GMST) has remained rather steady and has even decreased in the central and eastern Pacific since 1983. This cooling trend is referred to as the global ‘warming hiatus’.”

We can see what they were concerned about with in this graph:

Bottom Line:

1.  Methods and definitions matter and can change our understanding of claimed rates of change of Global Mean Temperature. As covered in my series “The Laws of Averages”, not all averages give the same result or the same meaning.  Some averages obscure the physical facts.

2.  “…the use of T2 may bias the temperature trend over globe and regions” and “the sharp faster warming in the highest northern latitudes is greatly reduced” by using T24  to calculate warming trends.

3.  Zhou and Wang recommend using the Integrated Surface Database-Hourly (ISD-H, [T24])available from NOAA.