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.
The need for action to mitigate climate change is in no way contingent on its role in extreme cold outbreaks. The heat and other impacts are bad enough...
Climate change has nothing to do with extreme cold outbreaks. We are heading towards a climate change cliff and we are deliberately ignoring it. We are suicidally short-sighted and egregiously irresponsible.
[last edited 0938 PST Feb. 7 2026, to fix an egregious error 8^( -MA]
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34 KJV)
Well, yes, however IMHO it's important to distinguish who among us are disproportionately driving climate change. Economists place ultimate blame on the "free" market's ancient propensity to socialize all the private transaction cost it can get away with. Both producers and consumers of fossil carbon are fractionally responsible: producers for digging it up and selling it by the gigaton for as much as the traffic will bear, and consumers for already paying the highest price they will bear for it. It's no longer defensible to say producers don't know what they're doing, but apparently at least half of US consumers don't.
Our real enemies, however, are the carbon capitalists investing in disinformation to obstruct collective intervention in their profits. We all know that's not conspiracist ideation, but a matter of amply redundant public record. It's not a secret in America, because it's not illegal. We even know many of their names. What is to be done, under the rule of law?
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!
The NYTimes has a report on that today (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/climate/cold-weather-climate-change.html), that I thought was accurate and reasonably even-handed, though journalistic. It agrees there's no consensus, but highlights pro-colder-extreme scientists' claims. It cites a peer-reviewed article making the link between polar vortex wander and extreme cold:
'“These are interesting ideas,” said Russell Blackport, a research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada. “But I’m very skeptical. When I look at these papers, they’re often not that convincing.”'
It quotes a couple of other specialists who say it's too soon to tell, including Jennifer Frances:
"Jennifer Frances, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Center in Falmouth, Mass., said it is too soon to tell whether the deep freeze in the East is linked to climate change, but agrees that long-term warming is changing seasonal weather patterns.
“'It’s going to take some pretty in-depth work, research with models and so forth to untangle all of the different factors that could be playing a role,' Dr. Frances said."
Also, Amy Butler:
"Amy Butler, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s chemical sciences laboratory in Boulder, Colo., cautions that it’s difficult to link a given weather event, such as a cold spell, to climate change.
"'What the data shows is that these cold extremes are getting less extreme, and they will continue to get less extreme,' she said."
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.
Remember that IPCC stands for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, started in 1988. And Plass (1955, Tellus, The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change) is one of the first modern papers on the effect of industrial CO2 on temperatures. In fact, global warming appeared later than climate change
You're an expert, of course, but I'd always taken it to mean any change in weather statistics, until the phrase "climate change due to anthropogenic global warming" was first uttered. Naturally, ludicrous claims over conspiring climate scientists' crafty resort to concise language were made immediately. The claims fell like Humpty-Dumpty, who wasn't the master of our common language anymore than professional, volunteer, or robot denialists are.
Most people who care about global warming don't obsess about what it is called. In any case Frank Luntz, US Republican communications advisor suggested avoiding calling it global warming because climate change sounded less alarming. It was more suggestive of 'natural/normal' too.
My take is that you use the term that is most appropriate to the discussion at hand. Refer to "ocean warming" if you're talking about coral reefs and tropical cyclones or increased anoxia leading to fish kills. Refer to "sea level rise"* if you're talking about saltwater intrusion, or higher storm surge, or loss of land to the sea. Refer to "ocean acidification" (from the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere) when you're talking about calcareous organisms (forams, coccolithophores, shelled molluscs, etc.) becoming less...calcareous. Refer to "global warming"† when talking about losing mountain glaciers.
Yet they're all ultimately the result of the great increase in greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.
Just my 2¢.
___________
*Please be clear when talking to non-experts that sea level rise varies around the planet. "Global Mean Sea Level Rise" numbers can be misleading when talking about any specific section of coast.
†or specifically "arctic amplification" when discussing the especially rapid Greenland ice cap melt or thawing permafrost.
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
It's 14F (-10C) here in NJ 2/8/26. One can argue global heating was the cause of the cold anomaly and also argue that the anomaly was warmer than it would have been without global heating.
Interesting read, thanks. But it comes across as creating a straw man to rail against, while ignoring the actual issue. Please allow me to parse...
At the beginning is a broad, unverified, generalized-yet-exaggerated claim that "a familiar refrain on social media claims that climate change is somehow to blame for every burst of extreme cold."
That is the straw man being create for the entire peice.
First off, I disagree. I see no one on social media blaming "every burst of extreme cold" entirely on climate change. That's a statement just as dramatic and hyperbolic as the straw man statement being made on behalf of no one.
What I DO see is people correctly questioning the unusual extreme depth of current cold events and the unusual length of them, and suggesting it could be the result of our climate imbalance, as it accelerates.
This is much like hurricanes.
Deniers like to say "well we don't have an increase in hurricanes" just like you say "well we don't have an increase in extreme cold events."
That would entirely be missing the influence of manmade climate change on how hurricanes are developing quicker, and into stronger events when they DO happen. So yes, there aren't more hurricanes, but YES they are getting stronger faster.
The same appears to be true for these extreme cold events: Yes there are not more of them (and they will decrease with global warming), but the strength, length, and depth of cold is very much likely influenced by climate change.
Instead of focusing on the role CC does play in these cold events, you appear to be distracted by a straw man in your imagination and determined to pretend there is no way CC can play a part in them.
I think that's a perspective that could be unhelpful for our path forward: keeping one eye closed while claiming the other has perfect sight.
Now write about what is actually being said on social media: CC is influencing these events, not by making more of them, but by making them longer and stronger.
You could write about imaginary straw men all day...but we need people writing about people, pls.
"Instead of focusing on the role CC does play in these cold events, you appear to be distracted by a straw man in your imagination and determined to pretend there is no way CC can play a part in them."
Not that either of them needs one, but call me Hausfather's, and Dessler's, bulldog. This isn't Zeke's strawman, he's calling out a relentless revenant anti-decarbonization meme propagated around the Internet by paid, volunteer and robot obstructionists, unwittingly abetted by the alarmed but credulous on social media.
"Now write about what is actually being said on social media: CC is influencing these events, not by making more of them, but by making them longer and stronger."
Well, if this wasn't the post you thought Zeke should write, write your own from random social media sources and post it on your own substack. Just a thought.
Sometimes it still gets cold in NE Iowa where I grew up. This winter is no exception. Yet, winters are largely milder there. The small ski area where I learned to ski in the '60s and '70s closed more than 20 years ago for lack of consistent snow through the winter.
When I moved to New Mexico in the 80s, Elephant Butte reservoir was at 100% capacity. It now hovers routinely around 10%.
Are these a result of climate change? I believe so but it is hard to convince people of climate change using anecdotal stories. Although, appealing to people's emotions is sometimes more effective than the science.
Like many students of climate change, science and solutions, I often feel overwhelmed by the volume of material out there. Andrew and Zeke have helped me navigate these waters effectively for many years. Recently, I decided to try and tell my story of why I am convinced that climate change is real, serious, and caused by humans, https://justdean.substack.com/p/why-i-believe-climate-change-is-real. I tried on my own terms to lay out a clear, end-to-end chain of reasoning for why I’m convinced — in a way that’s accessible to non-specialists but still rigorous enough to be of interest to people who know the science well.
Spoiler alert: For my punchline I compare and contrast the strong relationship between GMST and CO2 concentration that Tierney et al. reported in their 2024 Science article, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk3705 for the deep time geological record to the deviation caused by anthropogenic emissions, e.g., similar to the temperature change vs CO2 concentrations presented by Berkeley Earth here, https://berkeleyearth.org/dv/temperature-change-vs-carbon-dioxide-concentration/ . I believe it will help people visualize how far and how fast we are driving the Earth's climate system out of equilibrium.
I'm restricting myself to the substacks I already follow, but I approve your plan to back up appealing stories with graphical peer-reviewed science 8^)!
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)
From about 1976, the trend of global mean surface temperature has accelerated to over 0.2°C/decade. The modern science of extreme weather attribution places the cost of the warming since then in the hundreds of thousands of deaths, and trillions of dollars in economic damages (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41888-1). Y'all can easily find the same sources I can, on your own hook or with AI assistance.
"Roger Pielke Jr talks about how rare extreme events are terrible in their ability to show significant trends without hundreds of data."
Indeed, RPJr has said that in his academic Political Science position, and concluded that therefore the lower tail of anthropogenic global warming's probable cost range in dollars and deaths makes capping the trend of GMST less urgent: IOW, uncertainty is his friend. Now he works for the notorious for-donor-profit denialist stinktank, the American Enterprise Institute (https://www.aei.org/articles/un-abandons-science-and-hires-climate-change-zealots-who-damn-the-facts/). I'm afraid that well was poisoned when it was dug, and RPJr's motivated cognition long since revealed. Ad hominem? Maybe, but plenty of experts dispute his numbers and analyses. I'm no kind of expert, but he sure sounds like a professional decarbonization obstructionist to me. You, OTOH, might be a volunteer. Or an AI. You tell us.
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.
"This is a prime example of why we need to look higher up for answers. According to the AIO (African Injection Oscillation) model, these extreme tropospheric events are not isolated; they are a direct result of the stratosphere acting as the 'creator' and primary driver.
My research shows that 70 hPa humidity levels (specifically around the 60% threshold) create a 'stratospheric press' that dictates these surface dynamics. While most models focus on warm waters or surface temps, the AIO model identifies the stratosphere as the primordial force behind these powerful storms and blockages.
I've been documenting these correlations for the 2026 season, and the data consistently points to this stratospheric forcing as the lead indicator."
"This is a prime example of why we need to look higher up for answers. According to the AIO (African Injection Oscillation) model, these extreme tropospheric events are not isolated; they are a direct result of the stratosphere acting as the 'creator' and primary driver.
My research shows that 70 hPa humidity levels (specifically around the 60% threshold) create a 'stratospheric press' that dictates these surface dynamics. While most models focus on warm waters or surface temps, the AIO model identifies the stratosphere as the primordial force behind these powerful storms and blockages.
I've been documenting these correlations for the 2026 season, and the data consistently points to this stratospheric forcing as the lead indicator."
Thanks for clarifying this, it's something I often wonder about, even after a good Pilates class. Could understanding these complex interactions help us predict other subtle climate shifts with more accurracy?
Aren't you & colleagues seriously ashamed, after all these years, to use the cozy and pleasant terms "climate change" and "global warming" when what we're experiencing is horrifying "climate breakdown/chaos" and "global roasting"?
LOL! Fact-free rhetoric attacking one's host and their peers for underestimating the problem, is a favorite tactic of mercenary decarbonization obstructionists seeking to sow chaos.
You imply you are Whitman's deputy "Spokesbard for Sailors, Lovers and Quakers". I'm skeptical!
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.
The need for action to mitigate climate change is in no way contingent on its role in extreme cold outbreaks. The heat and other impacts are bad enough...
Yes, the chaos from climate change is just beginning to erupt. We should have been changing direction 50 years ago when the brightest warned us.
Climate change has nothing to do with extreme cold outbreaks. We are heading towards a climate change cliff and we are deliberately ignoring it. We are suicidally short-sighted and egregiously irresponsible.
[last edited 0938 PST Feb. 7 2026, to fix an egregious error 8^( -MA]
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34 KJV)
Well, yes, however IMHO it's important to distinguish who among us are disproportionately driving climate change. Economists place ultimate blame on the "free" market's ancient propensity to socialize all the private transaction cost it can get away with. Both producers and consumers of fossil carbon are fractionally responsible: producers for digging it up and selling it by the gigaton for as much as the traffic will bear, and consumers for already paying the highest price they will bear for it. It's no longer defensible to say producers don't know what they're doing, but apparently at least half of US consumers don't.
Our real enemies, however, are the carbon capitalists investing in disinformation to obstruct collective intervention in their profits. We all know that's not conspiracist ideation, but a matter of amply redundant public record. It's not a secret in America, because it's not illegal. We even know many of their names. What is to be done, under the rule of law?
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.
The NYTimes has a report on that today (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/climate/cold-weather-climate-change.html), that I thought was accurate and reasonably even-handed, though journalistic. It agrees there's no consensus, but highlights pro-colder-extreme scientists' claims. It cites a peer-reviewed article making the link between polar vortex wander and extreme cold:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adq9557
It cites a more cautious one by Blackport et al:
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.adp1346
'“These are interesting ideas,” said Russell Blackport, a research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada. “But I’m very skeptical. When I look at these papers, they’re often not that convincing.”'
It quotes a couple of other specialists who say it's too soon to tell, including Jennifer Frances:
"Jennifer Frances, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Center in Falmouth, Mass., said it is too soon to tell whether the deep freeze in the East is linked to climate change, but agrees that long-term warming is changing seasonal weather patterns.
“'It’s going to take some pretty in-depth work, research with models and so forth to untangle all of the different factors that could be playing a role,' Dr. Frances said."
Also, Amy Butler:
"Amy Butler, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s chemical sciences laboratory in Boulder, Colo., cautions that it’s difficult to link a given weather event, such as a cold spell, to climate change.
"'What the data shows is that these cold extremes are getting less extreme, and they will continue to get less extreme,' she said."
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.
Remember that IPCC stands for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, started in 1988. And Plass (1955, Tellus, The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change) is one of the first modern papers on the effect of industrial CO2 on temperatures. In fact, global warming appeared later than climate change
You're an expert, of course, but I'd always taken it to mean any change in weather statistics, until the phrase "climate change due to anthropogenic global warming" was first uttered. Naturally, ludicrous claims over conspiring climate scientists' crafty resort to concise language were made immediately. The claims fell like Humpty-Dumpty, who wasn't the master of our common language anymore than professional, volunteer, or robot denialists are.
Most people who care about global warming don't obsess about what it is called. In any case Frank Luntz, US Republican communications advisor suggested avoiding calling it global warming because climate change sounded less alarming. It was more suggestive of 'natural/normal' too.
How I think about it is that; global warming is the disease, climate change the symptoms.
But as others have replied, nobody actually changed the name.
My take is that you use the term that is most appropriate to the discussion at hand. Refer to "ocean warming" if you're talking about coral reefs and tropical cyclones or increased anoxia leading to fish kills. Refer to "sea level rise"* if you're talking about saltwater intrusion, or higher storm surge, or loss of land to the sea. Refer to "ocean acidification" (from the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere) when you're talking about calcareous organisms (forams, coccolithophores, shelled molluscs, etc.) becoming less...calcareous. Refer to "global warming"† when talking about losing mountain glaciers.
Yet they're all ultimately the result of the great increase in greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.
Just my 2¢.
___________
*Please be clear when talking to non-experts that sea level rise varies around the planet. "Global Mean Sea Level Rise" numbers can be misleading when talking about any specific section of coast.
†or specifically "arctic amplification" when discussing the especially rapid Greenland ice cap melt or thawing permafrost.
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 balance.</irony>
I apologize for the micro-aggression. Still, the wicked flee when none pursueth ;^).
It's 14F (-10C) here in NJ 2/8/26. One can argue global heating was the cause of the cold anomaly and also argue that the anomaly was warmer than it would have been without global heating.
Interesting read, thanks. But it comes across as creating a straw man to rail against, while ignoring the actual issue. Please allow me to parse...
At the beginning is a broad, unverified, generalized-yet-exaggerated claim that "a familiar refrain on social media claims that climate change is somehow to blame for every burst of extreme cold."
That is the straw man being create for the entire peice.
First off, I disagree. I see no one on social media blaming "every burst of extreme cold" entirely on climate change. That's a statement just as dramatic and hyperbolic as the straw man statement being made on behalf of no one.
What I DO see is people correctly questioning the unusual extreme depth of current cold events and the unusual length of them, and suggesting it could be the result of our climate imbalance, as it accelerates.
This is much like hurricanes.
Deniers like to say "well we don't have an increase in hurricanes" just like you say "well we don't have an increase in extreme cold events."
That would entirely be missing the influence of manmade climate change on how hurricanes are developing quicker, and into stronger events when they DO happen. So yes, there aren't more hurricanes, but YES they are getting stronger faster.
The same appears to be true for these extreme cold events: Yes there are not more of them (and they will decrease with global warming), but the strength, length, and depth of cold is very much likely influenced by climate change.
Instead of focusing on the role CC does play in these cold events, you appear to be distracted by a straw man in your imagination and determined to pretend there is no way CC can play a part in them.
I think that's a perspective that could be unhelpful for our path forward: keeping one eye closed while claiming the other has perfect sight.
Now write about what is actually being said on social media: CC is influencing these events, not by making more of them, but by making them longer and stronger.
You could write about imaginary straw men all day...but we need people writing about people, pls.
Thanks!
"Instead of focusing on the role CC does play in these cold events, you appear to be distracted by a straw man in your imagination and determined to pretend there is no way CC can play a part in them."
Not that either of them needs one, but call me Hausfather's, and Dessler's, bulldog. This isn't Zeke's strawman, he's calling out a relentless revenant anti-decarbonization meme propagated around the Internet by paid, volunteer and robot obstructionists, unwittingly abetted by the alarmed but credulous on social media.
"Now write about what is actually being said on social media: CC is influencing these events, not by making more of them, but by making them longer and stronger."
Well, if this wasn't the post you thought Zeke should write, write your own from random social media sources and post it on your own substack. Just a thought.
Sometimes it still gets cold in NE Iowa where I grew up. This winter is no exception. Yet, winters are largely milder there. The small ski area where I learned to ski in the '60s and '70s closed more than 20 years ago for lack of consistent snow through the winter.
When I moved to New Mexico in the 80s, Elephant Butte reservoir was at 100% capacity. It now hovers routinely around 10%.
Are these a result of climate change? I believe so but it is hard to convince people of climate change using anecdotal stories. Although, appealing to people's emotions is sometimes more effective than the science.
Like many students of climate change, science and solutions, I often feel overwhelmed by the volume of material out there. Andrew and Zeke have helped me navigate these waters effectively for many years. Recently, I decided to try and tell my story of why I am convinced that climate change is real, serious, and caused by humans, https://justdean.substack.com/p/why-i-believe-climate-change-is-real. I tried on my own terms to lay out a clear, end-to-end chain of reasoning for why I’m convinced — in a way that’s accessible to non-specialists but still rigorous enough to be of interest to people who know the science well.
Spoiler alert: For my punchline I compare and contrast the strong relationship between GMST and CO2 concentration that Tierney et al. reported in their 2024 Science article, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk3705 for the deep time geological record to the deviation caused by anthropogenic emissions, e.g., similar to the temperature change vs CO2 concentrations presented by Berkeley Earth here, https://berkeleyearth.org/dv/temperature-change-vs-carbon-dioxide-concentration/ . I believe it will help people visualize how far and how fast we are driving the Earth's climate system out of equilibrium.
Hi Dean,
I'm restricting myself to the substacks I already follow, but I approve your plan to back up appealing stories with graphical peer-reviewed science 8^)!
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)
[Last edited 18:19 PST Feb. 2 2026 -MA]
"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"
That's tendentious misinformation at best. It's not true even in the contiguous USA. And "minor" is in the eyes of the victims.
The globe has seen 1.3°C of warming in that period, with a temporary plateau, not a peak, at about 0.3°C from the early 1940s through the mid-1970s (https://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2025/); both the early rise and mid-century plateau are widely considered to be at least partially anthropogenic (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-3/).
From about 1976, the trend of global mean surface temperature has accelerated to over 0.2°C/decade. The modern science of extreme weather attribution places the cost of the warming since then in the hundreds of thousands of deaths, and trillions of dollars in economic damages (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41888-1). Y'all can easily find the same sources I can, on your own hook or with AI assistance.
"Roger Pielke Jr talks about how rare extreme events are terrible in their ability to show significant trends without hundreds of data."
Indeed, RPJr has said that in his academic Political Science position, and concluded that therefore the lower tail of anthropogenic global warming's probable cost range in dollars and deaths makes capping the trend of GMST less urgent: IOW, uncertainty is his friend. Now he works for the notorious for-donor-profit denialist stinktank, the American Enterprise Institute (https://www.aei.org/articles/un-abandons-science-and-hires-climate-change-zealots-who-damn-the-facts/). I'm afraid that well was poisoned when it was dug, and RPJr's motivated cognition long since revealed. Ad hominem? Maybe, but plenty of experts dispute his numbers and analyses. I'm no kind of expert, but he sure sounds like a professional decarbonization obstructionist to me. You, OTOH, might be a volunteer. Or an AI. You tell us.
"And just to say that starting any analysis at the coldest moment of the last 100 yrs is bound to show warming"
Uh. Seriously? It is warming. That's why the coldest moment of the last 100 yrs was 100 years ago.
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.
Good elaboration Dr Hausfather. I wish the global warming deniars wouldn't use freak cold spells as proof Earth is not getting warmer.
"We need to look higher. The African Injection Oscillation (AIO) model explains how stratospheric dynamics create these weather patterns."
"We need to look higher. The African Injection Oscillation (AIO) model explains how stratospheric dynamics create these weather patterns."
The Cold Weather is Beginning to P:roduce Angry Political Fallout:
Bikers in the East are clamoring for more global warming
Read the “East’s Deep Freeze amd the Revenge of the Bikers” in
https://davidgottfried.substack.com/p/the-politically-incorrect-sound-of
"This is a prime example of why we need to look higher up for answers. According to the AIO (African Injection Oscillation) model, these extreme tropospheric events are not isolated; they are a direct result of the stratosphere acting as the 'creator' and primary driver.
My research shows that 70 hPa humidity levels (specifically around the 60% threshold) create a 'stratospheric press' that dictates these surface dynamics. While most models focus on warm waters or surface temps, the AIO model identifies the stratosphere as the primordial force behind these powerful storms and blockages.
I've been documenting these correlations for the 2026 season, and the data consistently points to this stratospheric forcing as the lead indicator."
"This is a prime example of why we need to look higher up for answers. According to the AIO (African Injection Oscillation) model, these extreme tropospheric events are not isolated; they are a direct result of the stratosphere acting as the 'creator' and primary driver.
My research shows that 70 hPa humidity levels (specifically around the 60% threshold) create a 'stratospheric press' that dictates these surface dynamics. While most models focus on warm waters or surface temps, the AIO model identifies the stratosphere as the primordial force behind these powerful storms and blockages.
I've been documenting these correlations for the 2026 season, and the data consistently points to this stratospheric forcing as the lead indicator."
Thanks for clarifying this, it's something I often wonder about, even after a good Pilates class. Could understanding these complex interactions help us predict other subtle climate shifts with more accurracy?
Aren't you & colleagues seriously ashamed, after all these years, to use the cozy and pleasant terms "climate change" and "global warming" when what we're experiencing is horrifying "climate breakdown/chaos" and "global roasting"?
no
Greta, I'm ashamed. Blah, blah, blah...
Where have you been? Earth is 🔥
LOL! Fact-free rhetoric attacking one's host and their peers for underestimating the problem, is a favorite tactic of mercenary decarbonization obstructionists seeking to sow chaos.
You imply you are Whitman's deputy "Spokesbard for Sailors, Lovers and Quakers". I'm skeptical!