Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
Is this really a climate change thing? I feel like we've had these cold snaps for as long as I can remember and it's just part of life here. Also, in my business we call this "reversion to the mean". Warm December and now a cold January.
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It's a tired trope to hear from many people that chalk up every unpleasant weather experience as 'increasing in frequency/intensity due to climate change' and the over the top new terminology now used to describe long witnessed weather phenomenon. It's frustrating because it's hypocritical to have people say on one side of their mouths 'weather does not equal climate' and then have the same people attribute all weather events that feature low or high temperatures and/or low or high precipitation using new hyperbolic terminology that makes it seem in people's memories that the weather event is 'unprecedented' or a new thing. We didn't hear about Polar Vortexes in 1989, but it sure as heck got down to the -30s and 40s in Alberta in cold snaps in the past.
- 'Polar Vortex' - formally called an arctic outflow
- 'Atmospheric River' - heavy coastal rains
- 'Heat Dome' - used to simply be called a heat wave
All that said, I don't want this post being dismissed as some sort of climate change denialist rant. In my mind the evidence is provided over long term trends of observations. Eg. on the Calgary Weather Records twitter account it was interesting to see that the rain on January 1st this year is not unprecedented in Calgary's history, but that the only other time in 120+ years of history it occurred in 2016. Furthermore on that same account it's interesting to note that for most incidences of warmer temperature records they seem to be herded in more recent years. That's the story and the evidence, not the mere existence of a 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Yeti cooler absolute zero Kelvin vortex' in January. "I never remember there being Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Yeti cooler absolute zero Kelvin vortexes in the 1980s and 90s, must be due to climate change, if only we paid more carbon tax!"