News Reporter: Climate Coach: Can global warming cause colder weather?

PUBLISHED BY

READ ONLINE | SIGN UP


Down-to-earth advice for life on our changing planet.

By Michael J. Coren

Welcome. This week, clean concrete and mulching Christmas trees. But first, can global warming cause colder weather?

Why does global warming cause more extreme weather?

One reader noted that heat waves make intuitive sense, but the connection to hurricanes, snowstorms, heat waves and cold snaps is confusing.

She's not alone. But there's an intuitive way to think about it. The greenhouse effect is adding more and more energy into Earth's systems. When that happens, like shaking a snow globe, old patterns are bound to change.

Here's how it works. Humans continue to release enormous amounts of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. Like a pane of glass, these gases allow much of the sunlight to pass through the atmosphere as shortwave radiation. But once it reaches the surface, much of this energy is absorbed and re-emitted as longwave radiation, which we experience as heat.

Some escapes back into space. But the thickening layer of greenhouse gases means more and more is trapped by the atmosphere. To feel how this works, try sitting (briefly) in a car on a hot, sunny day.

This heats things up, of course. Since the late 1800s, temperatures have already risen 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit). This also sends more moisture from evaporation into the atmosphere, increasing the intensity and frequency of heavy precipitation. It can even cause localized cooling or snowstorms.

In parts of Siberia, for example, snowfall appears to be increasing. As sea ice melts in the Arctic Ocean, more water is evaporating into the atmosphere. That's boosting cloudiness and snowfall, scientists say in Environmental Research Letters. The rising snowfall is shifting weather patterns, bringing even more frigid air from the poles to lower latitudes during the winter.

But that's an exception. Localized cooling doesn't change the fact that the Arctic is warming nearly four times as fast as anywhere else on the planet, and we're headed for a dangerously hot world.

Complex interactions like these make the effects of climate change specific to each place on the globe, even if there are a few cool spots.

Have a question for my next column? Write me at climatecoach@washpost.com. I read all your emails.

Snapshot

The climate future arrived in 2023, writes The Washington Post's Chico Harlan, and the scars are visible across the planet and our psyche.

A Category 5 cyclone smashed into the small Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. Fires razed Greece, sending smoke 1,000 miles away into Tunisia. In Canada, a fire season unlike any other ravaged a vast swath of boreal forest about twice the size of Portugal. Even in Brazil's normally lush Amazon, a record-breaking drought left rivers dry.

Residents watch a wildfire in Avantas, Greece, in August. (Achilleas Chiras/AP)

This year's conditions were "mind-boggling," scientists say, including a day, Nov. 17, when average global temperatures reached 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels for the first time ever.

"It's very sad," said Matthias Huss, a glaciologist who had seen Switzerland's glaciers lose 10 percent of their mass over the past two years. "We are witnessing this transition into a new world."

The Second Degree

Many of you responded to my column on Swedish death cleaning in the last newsletter. Some objected I was a bit too unsparing in getting rid of (almost) everything, even from people I loved. Others found a new way to evoke a sentimental attachment to a time, place or feeling: "Take a PHOTO of it, then pass it on to someone else to enjoy," Kathleen wrote while proposing a new name for the process. "I choose to call it 'Life Cleaning' rather than 'Death Cleaning' —despite knowing I'm quite mortal 😊."

Sally, a "Royal Navy brat" who now lives in Vermont, said a long voyage revealed just how little she really needed to feel fulfilled. "At the end of 11 years' sailing almost around the world, half my clothes were still in their bags unworn!" she wrote. "It made me realize how little one can be happy with. We're now back enjoying our grandchildren and living with few possessions and no clutter. It can be done!"

Elise, who claims Swedish descent, shared the Swedish word "lagom." "It is a philosophy of balanced living," she wrote, "'not too little, not too much, just right.' I think the Scandinavians get it right."

If you need help downsizing, plenty of professional organizers or movers such as the National Association of Senior and Specialty Move Managers make the process easier.

And a correction from a previous email about an article on whether global warming is accelerating: I mentioned the rate of global warming has been increasing by 0.02C per decade since 1970. It is rising by nearly 0.2C per decade.

On the Climate Front

From The Post:

The USS North Carolina Battleship Memorial, a flood-prone historic site, decides to stop fighting rising water.

"Cherry-picking" policies let one insurer win big in Florida's insurance crisis.

Grow houseplants that help — not hurt — the planet. Here's how.

Can you guess how crazy last year's weather was? Try this game.

From elsewhere:

The Guardian interviewed scientist Hannah Ritchie: 'Doomsday predictions are a dream for climate deniers.'

Tom Zoellner, a journalist and fifth-generation Arizonan writing in the New York Times, says don't flee the American Southwest — just yet.

Instead of burning coal, a company is zapping rocks in water with electricity to make cement, reports MIT Technology Review.

Don't throw out your Christmas tree, says Outside magazine. Do this instead.

With the winter solstice behind us, we can look forward to longer days. Carol in upper east Tennessee, a densely forested stretch of the Appalachian Mountains, sent this photo of a sunrise from last July as a reminder of what we can look forward to this summer.

Send me your photos and stories at climatecoach@washpost.com