Thinking about winter in a changing climate

“I hear they had quite a hard frost in Sussex this morning”

“Oh wow, really?”

Was how a conversation with my father started on Christmas Day, 2018. A Christmas Day which, like the previous year, was more mild and damp than crisp and even.

It indicates something remarkable about our ability as humans to adapt and get used to new ‘normals’ that on the 25th December — a day that is typified in films, songs and card shops around the world as snowy and cold — the fact that some areas of the U.K. experienced frost was worthy of note. But whilst we still watch those same movies, listen to the old songs and send each other cards depicting snowy scenes, when we do get cold weather we call it ‘the Beast from the East’ and are told to prepare for extreme conditions; as if winter weather happening in winter is something unusual.

Because it is becoming unusual and we don’t know how to talk about it. Shifting baselines is a concept in climate science whereby humans perceive the natural world inaccurately and this perception changes over time, slowly enough that it largely goes unnoticed. If you woke up one winter day and suddenly all the snow was gone and it was 15 degrees outside, you’d notice. But if each passing winter was slightly warmer than the last, so that even though you spent your childhood Christmases sledging and now you have to leave the back door open because it’s too warm whilst cooking lunch, it’s harder to notice that change. Until you think about it.

Of course it’s not just weather conditions; children today will think that it is normal to not regularly see foxes, rabbits and badges, not to hear frequent birdsong or to be in a place where there is no trace of human impact. It is both a strength and a danger to our species that we can adapt so easily and within such short timeframes.

Although I live in London I’m lucky enough that I get to travel up to Scotland semi-regularly, normally to spend weekends running or walking in the mountains. When planning for one of these weekends, in the winter, I’ll look at the Scottish Avalanche Information Service and the Mountain Weather Information Service to get a sense of conditions and plan my route. The blog posts from SAIS over the last few weeks have remarkable, the names themselves a depressing indication of the new reality of British winters: rain and hill showers, mild again, the mild spell continues…But what none of these blogs mention is climate change. It’s understandable; I felt the same way when noting the warm weather with my family at Christmas — as though the phrase itself is taboo, an awkward topic that you don’t bring up in polite company.

I personally love cold weather and feel a profound sense of loss at the prospect of the end of snowy winters in a warming climate. A lot of people don’t feel like this; to them winter is cold, dark and damp. Once the festivities of Christmas and New Year are over there is little to look forward to except the arrival of warmer spring weather. People like to joke that the British love talking about the weather. It’s true that we do — perhaps because we have so much of it. But we are facing the blurring of seasonal boundaries and we need to be able to talk about this change, rather than carrying on as though things are normal.

Humans have always lived in relatively stable, warm conditions; the Holocene was a gift of coincidental geologic and atmospheric processes. The Anthropocene is not. We don’t know how to talk about climate change because we have never known a changing climate until now. This isn’t just about feeling sad that I won’t be able to go sledging on Christmas Day anymore. This is about avoiding sleepwalking into extreme change because we are unable to process what is happening and talk about it in a plain way.

So next time you see a weather warning for “extreme cold conditions” in January remember; this is normal. It’s extreme warm conditions we should be worried about.