Are Cold Waves Increasing Under Global Warming? The Answer is Clearly No.

The coldest temperatures of the winter have hit the central and eastern U.S. and misinformation about its origin is now spreading around social and traditional media.

President Trump, of course, tweets about the cold wave, suggesting that global warming has left us, and hopes for its return.  Absolutely untrue.  A cold wave, such as the one hitting the U.S. says nothing about the existence of global warming caused by increasing greenhouse gases.

And then a number of supposedly reputable media outlets, such as the NY Times and the WA Post, that are giving play to the hypothesis that global warming is causing more cold waves, through the "lazy jet stream" mechanism pushed by Dr. Jennifer Francis of Woods Hole and Dr. Judah Cohen. of a private sector firm, AER.

These claims are clearly false:  the observational evidence is very clear:  there are LESS cold waves today than in the past.   Which is exactly what we would expect in a warming world.

Global warming is NOT causing more cold extremes, it is doing the OPPOSITE.

Let me show you analyses produced by U.S. government experts.

The U.S.  Environmental Protection Agency did a study of the trend of cold wave days from 1948 to 2015.   The found very few locations where cold waves were becoming more frequent, but lots of locations in the western U.S. and the East Coast where cold waves were become less frequent, with the West Coast showing a huge decline of cold waves (see below).

A plot of the area in the U.S. covered by extreme cold over the past century (again by EPA) shows a decided decline in cold daily lows.

What about statistics from NOAA?   Here is a plot for the National Climate Data Center on the changes in winter cold extremes over the U.S.  The minimum temperature extremes are warming, not getting colder.  Extreme cold waves are weakening.

And a global view of the trend in daily temperature extremes around the world compared to the global warming signal shows that extreme lows are warming FASTER than the overall global warming signal.  So extreme cold waves are weakening quickly

Trend in the temperature of the coldest day of the year as a multiple of the global mean temperature rise. Source: NOAA/NCEI/GHCN-D stations with at least 50 years of data via the KNMI Climate Explorer.

I could show you much more, but the facts are clear.  There is no increasing trend in cold waves as claimed in the NY Times and other media.  Observations demonstrate that cold waves are declining in magnitude as the Earth warms. 

This makes complete physical sense.   Global warming is preferentially warming the Arctic and northern latitudes, the source region of the cold air that moves southward in cold waves.  And there is little evidence for the "lazy jet stream" theory in observations.

I for one find it really disturbing the such obviously false information is being communicated by major media outlets.  

from Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/01/are-cold-waves-increasing-under-global_30.html