Yes, New England really was colder when you were a kid. Climate change makes snowy winters feel like a treat.
Baby Boomers grew up with two more weeks of frozen lakes than Gen Z is living with now.
Finally. We watched snowflakes glimmer in the light of street lamps. Kids played pick-up hockey on frozen ponds. And skiers relished in the abundant snow cover — a booming ski season was back.
After years of warm winters that limited snow sports and often left the ground muddy instead of blanketed by white, New Englanders this year welcomed back a winter season that felt, well, cold.
This more classic New England winter is thanks to a weak La Niña weather pattern that tends to draw in more cold air and help whip up storms. Even so, this winter doesn’t come close to the hallmark bitter cold winters of Boston: Temperatures trended below average but were generally well within what’s considered normal. And the snowfall in Boston was actually below average between December and late February.
Continue reading on The Boston Globe.
The polar vortex is acting weird and the US is paying the price this winter
It’s really, really cold again — as the US shivers through at least the eighth blast of air from the Arctic this winter.
Winter, which is warming faster than any other season for much of the US, seems to be making a comeback for the first time in years; this January was the coldest in the Lower 48 since 1988.
But the US is an outlier, and so is this winter. January was the warmest on record for the globe and, in a vast expanse of global warmth, the US sticks out like a cold, sore thumb.
Update: How’s U.S. winter weather changing in a warming world?
Cold extremes are indeed waning over most of the midlatitude Northern Hemisphere, but a decade-plus debate on the Arctic’s role continues.
When a full-fledged snowstorm descended on the U.S. Gulf Coast in mid-January 2025, followed by a night of unprecedented cold across some bayous and beaches (see Part I of this two-part post), it did more than turn New Orleans and Mobile into winter wonderlands. It reignited a topic that’s cropped up again and again across science and media landscapes since the early 2010s: Is a warming Arctic affecting winter extremes over North America and Eurasia? And if so, how?
Read more on Yale Climate Connections.
The current state of the Arctic carbon cycle
New study on the Arctic carbon cycle provides important insights and highlights research needs
The Arctic plays a central role in the global climate system, particularly through its function as a carbon sink. However, climate change could disrupt its balance. An international research team headed by the Alfred Wegener Institute and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam has presented a comprehensive analysis of the current state of the Arctic carbon cycle. The results, which have been published in the scientific journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, provide new and updated numbers and highlight existing uncertainties.
Read more on The Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry website.
Scientists look to keep NWT’s huge carbon stores out of the air
Cutting human-driven greenhouse gas emissions is already proving tough in the North. Now, attention is turning to carbon within the land itself – an emissions problem that also needs solving and which could be hugely damaging.
Governments across Canada and the world have spent years trying to bring down the emissions we put out through our use of fossil fuels.
Yet targets are being missed and our world is still warming. As it does that, the likelihood increases that massive stores of carbon contained within our landscape will start to emerge into the air, making the overall problem worse.
Next week, scientists will gather in the Northwest Territories to talk about that.
Continue reading on Cabin Radio.
January 2025 was warmest on record as climate change ‘overwhelms’ La Niña’s cooling
January 2025 was the warmest January on record, surpassing the previous record set by January 2024, according to satellite data from the EU’s Copernicus program. The findings were unexpected as ongoing La Niña conditions in the Pacific typically cool down global temperatures.
The global average surface air temperature for the month reached 1.75° Celsius (3.15° F) above pre-industrial levels. The most dramatic variation, up to 6°C (10.8°F), was concentrated in northern Canada, Russia and the Scandinavian countries.
Warmth is weakening the polar vortex. Here’s what it means for extreme cold.
Research has found that rising temperatures in the Arctic are weakening weather systems that normally trap the cold around the poles, making winter weather more chaotic.
The blast of cold that fueled record snowfall across Gulf Coast beaches last week was just the latest to transport frigid air that normally swirls above the North Pole to places much farther south — a phenomenon that researchers connect to a warming climate.
While scientists say that there is not evidence that extreme cold is becoming more frequent or intense, a growing body of research is finding that rising temperatures in the Arctic are weakening weather systems that normally trap the cold around the poles, making winter weather more chaotic. This shift is encouraging the erratic weather patterns high in the atmosphere that can cast chills even on regions with typically balmy climates, some research suggests, threatening to overwhelm communities not prepared for such frigid conditions.
Continue reading on The Washington Post.
Sobering news for the North
Science columnist Torah Kachur says new research indicates the Canadian North is not as effective a carbon sink as once thought.