Are winters getting warmer?

We examine whether any trends in monthly temperatures are the same through-out the year for various lengthy series. The data concern the world, the northern and southern hemispheres, and about three centuries of data for the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. For the empirical exercise, we rely on new and accurate tests which have been recently developed. These tests do not have standard distributions, so that critical values have to be tabulated. The empirical findings include significant worldwide temperature increases, differences across months for the northern hemisphere, and warming winters for the UK and the Netherlands. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.