January 2026 - Page 13 of 13 - Climate Impact Company

News

01/05/2026, 4:24 am EST

Colder HDD Forecast for Europe January 2026

The outlook for JAN-26 is cold. The first half of JAN-26 is cold for most of Europe (except Portugal/Spain). The cold is stronger than the 30-year normal, especially East Europe. The Europe-West chill is slightly colder than last year and much colder than the last 2 mid-winter regimes for Europe-East.

01/04/2026, 1:05 pm EST

Operational/AI Model Verification Report, North America, Past 30 Days

In the extended range, interesting is the drop-off in skill from 0.25 to 0.45 in the 16-20-day period to 0.15 to 0.25 in the 25-30-day period. In fact, the 25-30-day forecast skill of the popular ECM “weeklies” was matched by the 10-year climatology. Not commonly used for extended range forecasts, GFS ENS ranked first for the extended range outlooks for the past 30 days.

01/04/2026, 7:03 am EST

Signs of Returning U.S. Cold Later January.

The consensus of operational models U.S. gas population weigh HDD forecasts is a trend from the early January warmth back to near normal for the week ending January 22nd. The 06Z GFS was colder than the 30-year normal. Interestingly, the ECM is colder for the second half of January across the Northern U.S. while CFS maintains the southern 2/3 of U.S. warmth. Therefore, the ECM/GFS HDD projections are near to below the 10-year normal in the extended range. However, the machine learning models are all cold to very cold for late January into early February.

01/02/2026, 4:04 am EST

Highly Variable Stratosphere, a Kelvin Wave, and Strengthening Marine Heatwaves

The evolving stratospheric temperature anomaly pattern during the first half of January is warming across Eurasia and cold in North America, the direct opposite regime of early meteorological winter. Beneath the high variation in stratospheric temperature, the troposphere (below) responds by warming North America while very cold air is ongoing in Europe and develops in Siberia.