In fact, in many regions, winters are actually warming faster than any other season.Ĭlimate Central reports that winters across the contiguous US have warmed by an average of nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit over the last half century. It’s happening in the winter too – even if it can seem less apparent in places still contending with traditional winter weather. Not to be outdone, devastating wildfires brought on by long-lasting drought and extreme heat burned millions of acres across the American West and Arctic. During the summer months, the effects of this warming are becoming more and more plain.įairly recently, we concluded a truly record-breaking hurricane season in the Atlantic, one likely to be best remembered for the rapid intensification of several storms due to far-warmer-than-normal waters in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico. << Overall, Winters Are WarmingĪround the world, temperatures are going up.Ĭarbon pollution from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas is warming our planet and driving climate change. > Take action: Learn how the climate crisis is creating dangerous extreme weather across the US during our Climate Reality Leadership Corps Virtual US Training. And it’s impacting our winters just as surely as it is our summers, even if those effects become ever so slightly more difficult to see between the gently falling snowflakes. And the year before that.īut the climate crisis is flipping the script and throwing our natural systems out of balance. That relative stability is why we have a pretty good idea of what will happen broadly with temperatures each season – because we saw it happen about this time last year. Climate, on the other hand, is the average weather over time, usually 30 years or more, and space.Ĭlimate is also relatively stable, or at least it had been for much of human history – until relatively recently for some weird reason. Weather can change minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. Weather describes what’s happening at a particular moment in time and in a particular place. Let’s get this out of the way right up top: Winter weather is just that – weather. Indeed, if you’re seeing more heavy lake-effect snows or are biting your nails in fear of the words “Polar Vortex” popping up on your weather forecast, you can maybe blame the climate crisis. Except the result is far more complicated than global climate change = the end of winter. The climate crisis is changing winters as we know them. So to those seeking an answer to that same question in good faith, we have answers. But it’s also hard to fault everyday people unfamiliar with climate science, the differences between climate and weather, and the less obvious impacts of the crisis for asking it too. It’s as predictable as the sunrise – and everyone who understands the science knows it’s a bogus, reductive argument, one often presented in bad faith by people who know better. The hats and gloves are out, and the snow has begun to fall.Īnd like clockwork, every time the temperature drops, climate deniers like to come out of the woodwork to ask their favorite question: “It’s cold out! The snow is piling up! Where’s all that global warming and climate change you keep talking about, huh?” Winter is almost here in the Northern Hemisphere. ![]() As an early-season, bone-chillingly cold air mass descends on much of the US and a potentially historic lake-effect snow event takes shape near Buffalo, now seems like a good time to remind that climate change means much more than just an increase in dangerous heat waves.
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