Seasonal trends by hemisphere
A reader raised a good question about my last post . One of the confirmed predictions of climate change is that winters will warm faster than summers, yet my analysis showed that December-February warmed the least. The question was why that would be. The answer is simple: I used global temperature data. December-February may be winter in the Northern Hemisphere but it is summer in the Southern. The seasons largely cancel out. The reason we see faster warming in the June-August (Northern Hemisphere summer) versus December-February (Southern Hemisphere summer) is due to the position of land masses. There's a greater proportion of ocean in the Southern Hemisphere and the ocean doesn't change temperature very readily compared to landmasses whereas the Northern Hemisphere has more landmass and consequently a larger response to seasonal changes in insolation.