Climate Central Appears on “EnergyNow”

Published: February 15th, 2011, Last Updated: February 15th, 2011

When the EnergyNow! crew came to our office in Princeton, N.J. to interview me for a story earlier this month, more than a foot of snow remained on the ground, the result of a series of blizzards and weeks of sub-freezing temperatures. No surprise that the reporter asked me to explain how we could be getting all this snow in a world that just recorded its hottest decade ever.

The short answer is, climate change and extreme weather — even the extremely snowy weather we’ve seen this winter in parts of North America and Europe — may be related. Specifically, melting Arctic sea ice may be impacting our winter here in the United States. This is still an active area of research, but as we've reported here at Climate Central, it could be due to something we've dubbed the "Arctic Paradox." That’s where changing atmospheric circulation patterns throughout the Northern Hemisphere may be caused by a combination of warming in the Arctic and the persistent loss of sea ice cover.

Of course, it's important to emphasize that natural climate variability, specifically a phenomenon like the North Atlantic Oscillation, play a big role in making for a cold, snowy winter here in the Northeast.