Climate Change™ Check-in 2025
Well it's a new year and that means we made it through the old one relatively unscathed, and in spite of the constant wailing and gnashing of teeth from the climate catastrophe crowd. This is the time I like to go over the actual temperatures we were forced to endure from the previous year and see how they stack up against what we've been told.
I did one of these last summer which you can read here if you like. I wrote that one in July and at that time I had hardly even realized it was summer yet. Thankfully it did end up warming up a bit after that so the summer wasn't a total loss. One thing about Southern Manitoba is we do have awesome summers here - they're just so damn short.
The charts
I'm going to try really hard not to repeat myself too much, other than to add my standard disclaimer, which is that I realize this is my local climate, which is but a small snapshot of the global one. Having said that, this fact does not make it irrelevant because this is truly part of what constitutes the global climate and if you were to do this same analysis in other parts of the globe, you'd likely find very similar results.
These charts were created with Microsoft Excel with data from the Government of Canada’s Historical Weather site.
Now with that out of the way, here is our average temperature over the last 120 years. 1904 is as far back as our temperature records go here, though the town has been here since the 1880s.
Keep an eye on that red trend line. You can scootch it up to the top of the screen and see how much it has moved (or not moved) in the last 120 years. If you're looking at this on your phone, you'll be able to see these charts a lot better if you rotate your phone to landscape mode.
Average temperature
This is the daily temperature averaged over each month.
The trend shows a rise of approximately 1.2° Celsius over the last 120 years on average.
I just heard some more breathless reporting the other day about how 2024 was again the hottest year on record and so it only makes sense that we should take a look at what the highest temperatures of the year looked like. I mean, I didn’t actually notice that it was any hotter than normal this year, and I was working outside for a good portion of the summer but hey - I may just be tougher than the average guy.
Maximum temperature
The next chart is the average of all the daytime highs in the month. Again, there is a slight increase, to the tune of about 0.5°C in the last century. Maybe. Don't feel bad if you haven't noticed.
Below are all the highest daytime temperatures of each month. So like, the warmest day of each month for the last 120 years. It's very much like the chart above except…
If you slide this chart up to the top of your screen, you can easily see that the line is trending down. In fact, our warmest days are now on average almost a full degree Celsius lower than they were 120 years ago. If it weren't for the constant barrage of ¡¡¡IT'S THE HOTTEST MONTH IN HUMAN HISTORY!!! on the news, I think most people would not be at all surprised by this.
So what's going on? Clearly our overall average temperatures have increased slightly. Keep in mind that these are all averages.
Minimum temperature
So here's what our minimum temperature has looked like. These are what we call the lows - the lowest recorded temperature in a 24 hour period average over the month to give us the average lowest temperature for the month.
Obvious rise here. It's a little over 2°C and is part of the answer. Yes, the nights are not quite as cool as they used to be. I don't miss that at all.
Summer
As I mentioned, Southern Manitoba summer are great, albeit short. For our purposes, I’ve chosen to call June, July, August, and September Summer because these are our warmest months. This is what they have looked like for the past 120 years. Again, these are the highest daily temperatures averaged over each month.
Can you see the rise? I think it might be about a quarter of a degree Celsius. In 120 years. Or something like that.
The following chart is the daily lowest temperature averaged over each month to give us the average lows. Once again we see a more than 2 degree rise in our night time temperatures:
Winter
First of all, the highs. Same as above - the highest daily temperature averaged over each month. Looks like about 1.5° (Oh my!)
And here are the night time lows. There is more than a 3 degree increase in our night time winter lows. One could likely make the case that this should save the average Canadian homeowner on heating costs and by extension also reduce the dreaded Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) required for that heat. Of course the average Canadian world never be able to notice this decreased cost thanks to Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax, but that's another story.
Conclusion
I think these charts show very clearly what’s happening in my neck of the woods. They also show that if you think the summers have gotten warmer and you need to run the AC more during the day, then you are very likely mistaken. They haven’t. Not really. The nights have gotten a little less cool here, but other than the odd really hot day (which we have less of now) you don’t need to run it that much more at night either, if at all.
The big takeaway from all of this is that not only are our summers not getting harder to live with, our winters are getting decidedly easier to live with. In other words, our climate is getting better, not worse. It’s getting easier to live here, not harder. Literally everything about this is good news, not bad. So, there’s that.
One last comment about THE HOTTEST YEAR EVAH:
When you hear the word hot in the context of weather, do you picture a sweltering summer day, or a mild afternoon in December? This distinction is important because in a scientific sense, there is only heat and cold. The words nice, mild, warm, etc. don’t really mean much because they are very subjective. For example, a beautiful day in January bears no resemblance whatsoever to a beautiful day in July for obvious reasons. So when a scientist stands there with a very serious look and a straight face and says that we just got through the hottest year ever recorded, he’s not wrong. The thing is (and assuming he’s being completely honest and genuine) normal people don’t talk like that when they’re talking about winter and night time temperatures. When normal people hear the word hot, they think about summer, not winter. But summer is not what these hot temperatures refer to, even though that's when these stories make the rounds. Remember that even during July of 2023 when it was apparently “the hottest month in human history,” it was winter over half the globe.
So how ‘bout we all stop freaking out about how “hot” it is all summer long because in all likelihood it’s not really that hot at all, and you probably missed the real heat which came precisely when you’ve been wishing for it all these years.
