Residents of New Haven and Houston both experienced an
onslaught of flurries this past January. As people across the
country donned their warmest sweaters, President Trump
interpreted the frigid temperatures as proof against climate change.
In an emphatic post on Truth Social, he asked, “WHATEVER
HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???”
Science tells us that this snowstorm was a severe weather event,
rather than a change in climate. The weather event at hand was a
disturbance to the polar jet stream, a band of strong westerly winds
that separates the mid-latitudes’ warm air currents from the Arctic’s
cooler ones. So, when it meandered farther south in January, it
brought colder air with it. Combined with high moisture, this was
the perfect recipe for heavy snowfall.
However, unlike weathercasts that report hourly flurries,
climate change refers to the long-term rise in global temperatures
over several decades. For the past five years, the mean annual temperature has exceeded one degree Celsius above twentieth-century baseline levels. These temperatures continue to rise despite the foot of snow found on New Yorkers’ doorsteps on January 25th. In fact, this trend applies to winters broadly. Recent findings suggest that climate change has led to an overall decline in cold
extremes in mid-latitude regions over the past few decades.
Ultimately, scientists expect sporadic cold fronts to persist
in this warming world. However, these mid-latitude cold spells
are becoming the exception rather than the rule in regular
winter patterns.