I think it's undisputed that the Arctic is warming at around 4x the rate of the rest of the planet. This is warping the polar vortex pushing the jet stream far south in the US since late January. Hence, the cold that has created extreme weather in southern states. While such events have occurred before GHGs were at record levels, not attributing this particular event to the increasingly stressed polar vortex seems misguided to me. However, you're the climate scientist. What say you?
Thank you for the links. I consult scientific publications often in my work. It's unfortunate that the one from Nature is paywalled.
As we wait for scientific consensus Rome burns. I do find that problematic.
I live in Buffalo, NY. When I returned five years ago after decades away, the change in the weather and length of the warm season was readily apparent as compared to my college years here. Three winters ago when we had a blizzard that swept 60 mile an hour winds and blinding snow down my street for 48 hours it was a completely different dynamic than the infamous storm of 1977. The snowfall was a result of Lake Erie not freezing over.
Much of last summer was oppressively hot and humid, more akin to my years in Cincinnati, Ohio, a much more southern longitude. While these are not scientifically measured observations, I think real life experiences and observations need to be taken seriously.
I appreciate scientific rigor and scientific publishing, but we are living in a four-alarm fire now. With sincere respect for your expertise, I find arriving at perfect consensus at this point to be problematic.
I appreciate your response and will read the Science Advances article.
That's not what we're waiting for. We already know far more than enough to justify collective (i.e. government) intervention to decarbonize our national and global economies, by taking the profit out of selling fossil carbon. It's a collective action problem: political, not scientific.
US voters: please vote Democratic at every opportunity, as the defacto party of collective action for public good, at least until some Republican candidate publicly repudiates the GOPs 20-year-old climate-science-denial plank!
So glad you're recirculating this great look at cold outbreaks on a human-heated planet. Like you, I've long tried to avoid jumping on "hot" narratives. My conversation last week with Matt Barlow, Jacob Chalif and Erich Osterberg is likely to be helpful for readers seeking more: Extreme Winter Weather in a Human-Heated Climate https://revkin.substack.com/p/extreme-winter-weather-in-a-human
Jeff, we alarmists would prefer larger datasets and discussion that shows a trend that over decades exceeds the natural variability by 2S. Then we have something to discuss. Roger Pielke Jr talks about how rare extreme events are terrible in their ability to show significant trends without hundreds of data.
And just to say that starting any analysis at the coldest moment of the last 100 yrs is bound to show warming (i do believe there has been minor natural warming over this time period with a peak in the 30’s similar in size to the current)
I do have a question Dr Hausfather. Is it possible that we get alot more polar vortex instability that the higher and mid latitude land masses get more snow and the albedo rise could cool us?
We've seen robust declines in extreme cold outbreaks and snow and ice cover in mid latitude land regions over the past few decades, so I pretty strongly doubt it will reverse course.
Is there an analogous analysis for heat days ? Days with temperatures over 85 or 90 ? For many people, fewer truly cold days are considered a blessing; more truly hot days, however, are not.
I get the impression the standard phrasing evolving from "global warming" to "climate change" is sometimes assumed to be an endorsement of this hypothesis. If indeed it almost never gets colder as a result of climate change, what was wrong with emphasizing the warming?
Climate change as a term actually predates global warming, and is meant to refer to broader non-temperature changes (e.g. precipitation), not cold outbreaks.
I'm just an ole doc with a laptop, but it appears to me that understanding LOW PRESSURE SYSTEMS is the key to understanding weather. Anyone can see them on NOAA's "Climate Pulse" web page. The heating of the Atlantic is clear, and the Lows pulling frigid Arctic air down from the far north as easy to spot. To me, and that's just me, apparently, the global heating problem is only partly due to the "Greenhouse Effect", with GHGs trapping solar radiation, but the other part is our burning of 8B tons of coal annually, and 100M barrels of oil, all of which is generating (with the GE) the heat energy equivalent of 8-15 (NOAA, Jacobson) Hiroshima yield nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND. Each blast releases the heat energy equivalent of15kt of TNT, so the oceans are setting records for heat energy absorption: 23 ZJ in 2025, a record. And, as the Lows are built on ocean heat energy. more and stronger storms, with longer lasting temp extremes as these things are huge, often spanning the US, but into Mexico and Canada. Thanks, Geoff, for your work, but don't buy the widely accepted and propagated "CO2" is ALL of the source of global heating (way past "warming").
I think it's undisputed that the Arctic is warming at around 4x the rate of the rest of the planet. This is warping the polar vortex pushing the jet stream far south in the US since late January. Hence, the cold that has created extreme weather in southern states. While such events have occurred before GHGs were at record levels, not attributing this particular event to the increasingly stressed polar vortex seems misguided to me. However, you're the climate scientist. What say you?
I say there is nowhere near consensus in the scientific community on that question:
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.adp1346
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0662-y
Thank you for the links. I consult scientific publications often in my work. It's unfortunate that the one from Nature is paywalled.
As we wait for scientific consensus Rome burns. I do find that problematic.
I live in Buffalo, NY. When I returned five years ago after decades away, the change in the weather and length of the warm season was readily apparent as compared to my college years here. Three winters ago when we had a blizzard that swept 60 mile an hour winds and blinding snow down my street for 48 hours it was a completely different dynamic than the infamous storm of 1977. The snowfall was a result of Lake Erie not freezing over.
Much of last summer was oppressively hot and humid, more akin to my years in Cincinnati, Ohio, a much more southern longitude. While these are not scientifically measured observations, I think real life experiences and observations need to be taken seriously.
I appreciate scientific rigor and scientific publishing, but we are living in a four-alarm fire now. With sincere respect for your expertise, I find arriving at perfect consensus at this point to be problematic.
I appreciate your response and will read the Science Advances article.
That's not what we're waiting for. We already know far more than enough to justify collective (i.e. government) intervention to decarbonize our national and global economies, by taking the profit out of selling fossil carbon. It's a collective action problem: political, not scientific.
US voters: please vote Democratic at every opportunity, as the defacto party of collective action for public good, at least until some Republican candidate publicly repudiates the GOPs 20-year-old climate-science-denial plank!
That is all.
So glad you're recirculating this great look at cold outbreaks on a human-heated planet. Like you, I've long tried to avoid jumping on "hot" narratives. My conversation last week with Matt Barlow, Jacob Chalif and Erich Osterberg is likely to be helpful for readers seeking more: Extreme Winter Weather in a Human-Heated Climate https://revkin.substack.com/p/extreme-winter-weather-in-a-human
"Like you, I've long tried to avoid jumping on "hot" narratives."
Heh. I, for one, am OK with that, as long as you're not indulging false equivalence.</irony>
I apologize for the micro-aggression. Still, the wicked flee when none pursueth ;^).
Jeff, we alarmists would prefer larger datasets and discussion that shows a trend that over decades exceeds the natural variability by 2S. Then we have something to discuss. Roger Pielke Jr talks about how rare extreme events are terrible in their ability to show significant trends without hundreds of data.
And just to say that starting any analysis at the coldest moment of the last 100 yrs is bound to show warming (i do believe there has been minor natural warming over this time period with a peak in the 30’s similar in size to the current)
I do have a question Dr Hausfather. Is it possible that we get alot more polar vortex instability that the higher and mid latitude land masses get more snow and the albedo rise could cool us?
We've seen robust declines in extreme cold outbreaks and snow and ice cover in mid latitude land regions over the past few decades, so I pretty strongly doubt it will reverse course.
Dang! That would have bought some time for drawdown to wrap up with stronger carbon sinks.
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow.. as Earth burns.
Is there an analogous analysis for heat days ? Days with temperatures over 85 or 90 ? For many people, fewer truly cold days are considered a blessing; more truly hot days, however, are not.
We did that in this: https://essopenarchive.org/users/260056/articles/1330312-climate-experts-review-of-the-doe-climate-working-group-report?commit=f2b7646f3573ccc4bd74fcc2e9a1111dfbf078c2
Look at page 182
It is all linked.
I get the impression the standard phrasing evolving from "global warming" to "climate change" is sometimes assumed to be an endorsement of this hypothesis. If indeed it almost never gets colder as a result of climate change, what was wrong with emphasizing the warming?
Climate change as a term actually predates global warming, and is meant to refer to broader non-temperature changes (e.g. precipitation), not cold outbreaks.
I'm just an ole doc with a laptop, but it appears to me that understanding LOW PRESSURE SYSTEMS is the key to understanding weather. Anyone can see them on NOAA's "Climate Pulse" web page. The heating of the Atlantic is clear, and the Lows pulling frigid Arctic air down from the far north as easy to spot. To me, and that's just me, apparently, the global heating problem is only partly due to the "Greenhouse Effect", with GHGs trapping solar radiation, but the other part is our burning of 8B tons of coal annually, and 100M barrels of oil, all of which is generating (with the GE) the heat energy equivalent of 8-15 (NOAA, Jacobson) Hiroshima yield nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND. Each blast releases the heat energy equivalent of15kt of TNT, so the oceans are setting records for heat energy absorption: 23 ZJ in 2025, a record. And, as the Lows are built on ocean heat energy. more and stronger storms, with longer lasting temp extremes as these things are huge, often spanning the US, but into Mexico and Canada. Thanks, Geoff, for your work, but don't buy the widely accepted and propagated "CO2" is ALL of the source of global heating (way past "warming").
Good elaboration Dr Hausfather. I wish the global warming deniars wouldn't use freak cold spells as proof Earth is not getting warmer.