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When it comes to global warming, don't let the cold snap fool you.
January has seen temperatures in European Russia plunge 5 degrees Celsius below a 30-year average, but this is simply more evidence of man-made climate change, Russia's climatologists say.
"Nature is looking for a new balance," said Viktor Danelyan, director of the Institute of Water Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciencies, of the record warm temperatures in December, followed by January's freeze.
"What that equilibrium will be - no one can tell. Once the various regional factors stabilise, the climate will be warmer in general. And the weather volatility we are seeing today will settle down. We can only hope that the new equilibrium is not too warm, because that will negatively affect life on earth."
Climatologists in Russia, where President Dmitry Medvedev has proposed to allow a small increase on current greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, agree that the weather here is becoming warmer, as least in part to man-made factors.
"The abnormally cold weather we are seeing does not contradict things," said Vladimir Katsov, a climatologist at the Voyeikov Geophysical Observatory in St. Petersburg. "So-called weather neuroses increase during periods of climate change."
