Extreme Winter Weather in a Human-Heated Climate

This was a deeply illuminating conversation with top-flight researchers aiming to get beyond the back-and-forth edge-driven volleys on global warming’s role in shaping severe winter weather in the United States.

Watch above or watch and share on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and X/Twitter.

Here’s one key point from Jacob Chalif, the lead author of a 2025 study that found the recent upswing in waviness in the jet stream was matched or outmatched by earlier periods several times in previous decades back through the 20th century.

This doesn’t mean global warming isn’t changing such atmospheric and weather patterns. It does mean that natural variability in the system is capable of such dynamics as well.

The details and background are in the pre-show post here:

Here are some of the papers we discussed:

• July, 2025 - The intensification of the strongest nor’easters https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2510029122

• July, 2025 - The Mid-20th Century Winter Cooling in the Eastern U.S. Explained https://eos.org/editor-highlights/the-mid-20th-century-winter-cooling-in-the-eastern-u-s-explained

• May 2025 - Attributing climate and weather extremes to Northern Hemisphere sea ice and terrestrial snow: progress, challenges and ways forward https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-025-01012-0

We also talked about a keystone need - vulnerability reduction - and something Trump could do (that he won’t do of course):

Thank you Michael Ludgate, Vivian Henry, Graham Chant, Peter van Soest, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.