The recent two-week cold wave that gripped much of the U.S. (now mercifully over) had nothing to do with current claims about climate change, according to an international group called the World Weather Attribution. The group of weather analysts said, “We do not find any evidence for an intensification of these types of cold waves due to the Arctic warming faster than the midlatitudes. On the contrary, they seem to be warming faster than the winter mean as the Arctic air coming south is less cold now.”
Many climate activists and environmentalists argued that the cold snap was the result of melting Arctic ice sending blasts of cold air south. Instead, the Associated Press reported, “A quick study of the brutal American cold snap found that the Arctic blast really wasn’t global warming but a freak of nature.”
The AP report said, “The cold snap that gripped the East Coast and Midwest region was a rarity that bucks the warming trend, said researcher Claudia Tebaldi of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the private organization Climate Central.”
Among those claiming that the cold wave was further evidence of global warming is former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who has made climate change his key environmental issue for more than 30 years. Citing controversial Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, Gore tweeted on Jan. 4, “It’s bitter cold in parts of the U.S., but climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann explains that’s exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis.”
Proponents of global warming as the most important threat to the future of the earth are wont to point to any extreme weather event as an artifact of climate change. The analysis of the cold snap contradicts those assertions. Climate change has made severe cold spells like the one that recently gripped the Northeast far less common than they used to be, the New York Times reported, based on the World Weather Attribution analysis.
University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke Jr., who accepts that climate change is occurring, has long studied the record of severe weather events and found no correlation between a changing climate and an increase of extreme weather events, which has earned him scorn from climate change political campaigners.
Two well-known weather phenomena – La Niña (El Niño’s little sister) and the Madden Julian Oscillation – may be the chief cause of the deep freeze, as a Bloomberg article noted. According to the article, The Madden Julian Oscillation is “a pulse of clouds and rain that moves through tropical oceans. The oscillation is pushing cold air into the south….”