Climate vs Weather: It’s easy to confuse current weather events with long-term climate trends, and hard to understand the difference between weather and climate. It’s a bit like being at the beach, trying to figure out if the tide is rising or falling just by watching individual waves roll in and out. The slow change of the tide is masked by the constant churning of the waves.
In a similar way, the normal ups and downs of weather make it hard to see slow changes in climate. To find climate trends you need to look at how weather is changing over a longer time span. Looking at high and low temperature data from recent decades shows that new record highs occur nearly twice as often as new record lows.: More on the science>
Recent Evidence: A good article in the International Business Times entitled “More Snow Doesn’t Stop Global Warming” explains the context and most recent science around this phenomenon. “There is some research that predicts colder winters with more snow, even though the winter season itself might be shorter. How does this happen? One reason is moisture. Warmer air holds more moisture, so more precipitation occurs when that warm air hits colder air. That becomes snow when the temperature is below freezing.” For the full article>
James Overland, an oceanographer of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has also offered some evidence that the loss of Artic sea ice and the heating of the ocean surface has changed air flow in the Artic and is moving cold air down to the southern U.S. For more on this see The New York Times piece called “A ‘Bulge’ in Atmospheric Pressure possibly attributable to climate change Gives Us a Super-Cold Winter Amid Global Warming” For the full article>
