Connecting the recent cold snap to climate change Connecting the ... - ABC 57 News
Connecting the recent cold snap to climate change
Every time there's cold weather, especially well below normal temperatures, I often get a sarcastic reply of " climate change " or " global warming ". This week, I got an email from a viewer, that had some skepticism, but I found it to be a good question, and teaching moment about weather and climate.
Both the near-record warmth in mid-April, and near-record chill to end April were weather events. The days were warm or cold, rainy, snowy or dry, that is weather. But all that WEATHER, makes up our climate record. Each day is a data point in a much larger data set.
Even with a terribly cold start to May, it doesn't offset all the mild days we've had to-date. This year, 2023 is still in the top 5, for the warmest first half of the year, to-date. Climate change continues to correctly predict there will be more occurrences of above average temperatures than below average. There will still be hot day and cold days, that's weather, but we should expect more of those hotter days, that's climate, and it's changing, quickly.
And for the record, I did put into context the colder than normal temperatures to start May.
The mild winter, we all had that feeling we'd have to pay for it later ???— Tom Coomes (@TomCoomes)
#inwx #miwx pic.twitter.com/ve3Ry45V00 May 1, 2023
I appreciate the email, there are no dumb questions. They often lead to interesting content for me to share.
Email:
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.