This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter

Temperatures, I hear today on the radio, are ‘struggling to push above freezing’; a relief perhaps for those of us shaking our heads over that unseasonably warm 18C day in Scotland in November.

Already, like most past weather, it’s almost forgotten. When it comes to meteorology, we live in the moment, or the moments just ahead. Already, the ‘travel chaos’ of Storm Darragh is fading into speculation is all about the possibility of a white Christmas.

The chances, according to the Met Office, don’t seem to be particularly high.

This talk of snow, and all its romance, comes towards the end of another year that is guaranteed to break temperature records. Yesterday the climate change service, Copernicus, confirmed this with deputy director Samantha Burgess saying: "With data in from the penultimate month of the year, we can now confirm with virtual certainty that 2024 will be the warmest year on record and the first calendar year above 1.5°C.”

Perhaps that extra heat doesn’t bother us so much in Scotland. We think of ourselves as a cold country that could do with a bit more warmth, though we are in fact temperate and mild compared to others at our latitude, like Edmonton Alberta, Minsk or Moscow. We are kept that way........

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