Right now, it’s early February, and we’re on track to have the warmest winter ever recorded in Canada. As that article explains, this is due to Arctic air patterns differing significantly from the norm, preventing cold air from moving south. Is it a fluke? Or is it just part of a great shift in the Earth’s climate that we’re currently watching unfold? No one can really answer that for sure, and I’m certainly not qualified to give any kind of scientific opinion on the subject (and the people who are will probably need to sift through the data for quite a while before answering with any kind of certainty). To my mind, though, the latter scenario seems far more likely, and the amount of “weird” weather we encounter on an annual basis will probably only increase.
I’m often amongst the first to caution against mistaking weather for climate. The difference being that weather describes what is happening outside at any given point in time, while climate is all about long-term trends in the weather. So when we talk about climate change, we’re really talking about how the weather will shift and become different across months and years. This means that it’s too early to tell if the past year or so is indicative of anything long-term, but the initial signs are certainly a bit distressing.
Here’s a quick visual to illustrate what I mean:
Map displaying abnormal precipitation across the United States. Source: NOAA
This map shows where precipitation in the United States deviated significantly from normal, with blue and purple representing abnormally wet years, and red and orange representing dry seasons. A quick visual scan is enough to see that a massive percentage of the United States had very abnormal precipitation, with at least half the country experiencing fairly major differences. A draught stretched across the Midwest and southwestern United States, while the northeastern States and the Plains had very wet years. Meanwhile, the Pacific Northwest featured dry years and wet years, nearly side-by-side to one another.
But what does all this mean? To put it simply, global climate change is about much, much more than the world simply becoming warmer. The Earth’s climate is shifting and changing much more rapidly than it ever has in the past, and with that comes unpredictable weather. Many people still seem to think that climate change simply means that winter will become warmer and easier, and while that’s certainly true this year, it’s important to remember that there will be other effects as well. If there’s one good thing about the kind of year we’re having—fluke or no—it’s that it should convince a few more people that something is seriously wrong with this planet. And that faster we try to fix it, the better.
