Almost a full two months after the season officially ended, winter reared its ugly head in much of the United States over the weekend. A winter-type Polar Vortex has caused record cold and extremely late season snow from the Rockies to the Atlantic Ocean. What’s responsible for this late season cold? If you listen to climate alarmists, the answer is simple: global warming.
In the Northeast, higher elevation areas reported snowfalls of up to 10 inches over the weekend. New York City received a trace of snow on May 9, tying the city’s record for the latest snowfall. In Islip, New York, a town of the southern shore of Long Island, the month of May was officially snowier than the month of February. Mother’s Day celebrations across the Midwest and Northeast were ruined by cold and windy conditions in the regions. Near record cold temperatures were reported from the Dakotas stretching down Texas and across most of the eastern United States.
All 6 of our climate sites (EWR, NYC, BDR, LGA, JFK, ISP) reported a T of snow early this morning. Officially, the month of May has the exact same amount of snow as the month of February for 5 of these sites.
Islip, NY has officially had a snowier May than February. #aMAYzing
— NWS New York NY (@NWSNewYorkNY) May 9, 2020
How do such conditions jibe with the narrative of man-made global warming?
As counterintuitive as it may sound, many in the climate-alarmist movement have claimed for years that extreme cold may be one result of anthropogenic global warming. This May’s freak weather, they claim, is basically the same phenomenon that brought record cold to the United States in early 2019. But that cold weather event occurred in January when winter cold is expected — not in May.
The theory goes that increased temperature at high altitudes in the Arctic — due to man-made global warming – is causing the the circumpolar vortex to split more easily, which allows lobes of Arctic air to make their way south, where they affect the United States with unusually cold weather. A 2018 study done by Dr. Marlene Kretschmer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research explains the alleged phenomena.
“This cold is very unusual,” said Ryan Maue, a meterologist at BAM Weather.
Maue says the unusual conditions might be due to a “weirding” of the jet stream caused by climate change. “It is difficult to pinpoint the cause-and-effect or correlation-causation with extreme weather events and climate change,” Maue said. “But changes in the behavior of the jet stream are becoming more accepted by scientists looking for physical reasoning behind what we are seeing on weather maps.”
Maue referred to the May cold period as a “climate change triple whammy,” as it will affect agricultural production, keep people inside heated buildings, and provide a more favorable outside environment for the spread of the coronavirus.
Maue hinted that more weather such as this can be expected in the future. “This is not some random one-off weather event but an obvious trend toward hyper-extreme atmospheric circulations outside the normal bounds of what we typically experience in May.” “It’s not always hotter and dryer with rapid climate change, but also colder and wetter,” Maue concluded.
In defense of their global-warming theory, climate alarmists have become masters of making the absurd sound reasonable. Jennifer Francis of the Woods Hole Research Center, a climate-change think tank, addressed the extreme cold in 2019 being the result of warming. “This symptom of global warming is counterintuitive for those in the cross-hairs of these extreme cold spells,” Francis said. “But these events provide an excellent opportunity to help the public understand some of the ‘interesting’ ways that climate change will unfold.”
In climate science, researchers begin with a conclusion that they are not allowed to revise. All findings must lead to the interpretation that humans are causing a warmer planet owing to their use of fossil fuels and the accompanying release of carbon dioxide. No other conclusion can be considered. This is the result of mixing science with a political agenda. Like anything mixed with politics, the science becomes corrupted by it.
Because of that political and globalist influence, any other possible reason for unusual weather — the sun, the ocean, the clouds, the orbital variations of the Earth — is dismissed. Climate change and extreme weather must be caused by human activity or the political movement would grind to a halt.
Nobody denies that the climate is changing — because it’s always done so. But, despite what climate alarmists tell you, the reasons for those changes is very much up for debate.
Photo: Aleksandr Durnov / iStock / Getty Images Plus
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects, with a primary focus on the ongoing anthropogenic climate-change hoax and cultural issues. He can be reached at [email protected]
