By Vijay Jayaraj

Across the globe, the month of June showed no signs of deviation from the climate trend for 2019: below average temperatures with chilling conditions.

Despite the hype surrounding climate change and warnings about extreme heat, many places across the Northern hemisphere displayed surprisingly colder weather conditions.

Last week, the cities of Hibbing and Hayward in Minnesota broke their previous records for the coldest temperature. On June 9, several cities in Wyoming recorded their lowest maximum on the same day as well. On the same day, Denver recorded the coldest summer (June, July, and August) high temperature since 2014.

Last month, Denver broke a 128-year record-low maximum temperature record for May 21. The month of May was the coldest on record in many parts of the United States. And on the first day of summer, Colorado got up to 20 inches of snow in the higher Rocky Mountains, leaving the state’s snowpack over 40 times normal for this time of year.

Across the Atlantic, the United Kingdom displayed a similar trend. The average temperatures for the month of June this year are so low that they have made it to the list of coldest Junes. June of 2019 is the 17th coldest June since records began in 1659. The lack of warming has dealt a severe blow to the open-field crop farmers in the UK.

Over in the East, the scenic Kashmir valley near the Himalaya mountains of India received snow in the first week of June, a phenomenon that is very rare and unusual. Climatologists say it is very uncommon for the valley to experience such low temperatures in the middle of Indian summer.

Surely, these record lows contradict the doomsday claims that warned us of above average summers. If human-induced climate change is supposed to cause the temperatures to rise above normal, why are we continuing to witness cold weather conditions across the globe?

The winters of 2018 and 2019 experienced a similar pattern of record lows across the globe. Record lows during consecutive years imply that the observed changes are more than just short-term, weather-induced phenomena.

In fact, for those of us who are familiar with satellite temperature measurements, the ongoing trend of record lows does not cause any surprise. Satellite measurements have indicated that there has been no significant warming in the last two decades. Moreover, the rise and fall of El Niño in 2016 paved the way for much cooler La Niña conditions.

The record lows in the past two years are a result of the combination of both short-term weather phenomena (like the ENSO cycle) and long-term climate trends (affected by changes in sun activity).

But instead of acknowledging these trends in climate, climate doomsayers continue to deliberately misuse the El Niño-driven warmth of 2016 and other temporary summer highs as evidence for extreme man-made climate change and doomsday fearmongering.

Climate alarmists are happy to consider short-term, local high temperatures as evidence of long-term global warming. But the same alarmists refuse to acknowledge the short-term, local low temperatures as evidence against long-term global warming. When it is hot, it is climate change. When it is cold, it is weather. The climate pattern continues to expose the hypocrisy of climate alarmists.

For now, the temperatures have cooled down, and it is difficult to reconcile them with the alarmist hype on climate to be wrong. The future is unknown, but a consensus is slowly emerging among academics about an imminent cooling phase due to low solar activity.

Vijay Jayaraj (M.Sc., Environmental Science, University of East Anglia, England), Research Associate for Developing Countries for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, lives in Bangalore, India.