Ambimama - India

UK has suffered as spectacular satellite image showed the entire British mainland covered in snow and ice during January and February. Scotland, has spent much of the last two months under a blanket of snow, is suffering its coldest winter since records began, according to the Met Office. The news is likely to be jumped upon by those who question the science behind the scientific ‘consensus’ that global warming is a reality.

The average temperatures in January and December were the coldest in Scotland since 1914 - the year that data was first logged.

The Met Office revealed that Northern Ireland experienced its coldest December and January since the early 1960s and it has not been colder in England and Wales since the winter of 1981/2. Scotland has borne the brunt of the freezing weather since the cold snap began in mid-December. The average minimum overnight temperature north of the border in January is zero - but last month it regularly dipped below -5C.

The Highland village of Altnaharra experienced the coldest temperature of the period, when the mercury dropped to -22.3C in January. The same village endured the UK’s record low in December 1995, when the temperature fell to -27.3C. The news is likely to be jumped on by those who disagree with the theory of global warming. The science of climate change has come under fire since the Copenhagen summit after the ‘Climategate’ scandal broke and scientists at the University of East Anglia were accused of manipulating data on global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has also had to apologise for claims that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear within 25 years.

However, most scientists still maintain that climate change is happening and that mankind is to blame.