Wild, Warm Winter Weather Brings Destruction and Climate Change Concerns

In the American South and Southwest and the north of England, there was no white Christmas this year. Instead, torrential storms brought deadly flooding in regions on both sides of the pond. At least 35 people have died in Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, and Tennessee, and the Lone Star state is now bracing for blizzards after having been struck by tornadoes and heavy rains that caused flooding. In the U.K., the army has been deployed to rescue people from sodden homes in and around the city of York.

The wet, warm winter can, in part, be blamed on El Niño, the weather system created by abnormally warm surface water temperatures in the Pacific. In drought-stricken California, many have welcomed the promise of a “Godzilla” El Niño, but as was the case in the winter of 1997–98, the last time Pacific temperatures rose as high as they are this year, the weather system can be highly destructive. This year, however, many are worried that something else might be at play: climate change.

“The government must drop its complacency over the need for climate change adaptation,” Kerry McCarthy, a spokesperson on environmental issues for the British Labor Party, told The New York Times on Sunday. “It must also invest in maintaining flood defenses, rather than cutting them as they had planned, as well as look urgently at what else can be done to reduce flood risk in future.”

Even in England, so famous for its dreary wet weather, such “so-called unprecedented weather events are here to stay,” she added.

Back in the U.S., the exceedingly low temperatures and massive blizzards that have marked recent winters in the Midwest and Northeast have prompted many a snide remark from climate-change-denying politicians: If the Earth is warming, why is it so damn cold outside? Thus far, the winter of 2015, which saw Central Park in New York City hit a record high of 66 degrees on Christmas Day, has yet to offer such opportunities.

On the contrary, the highly abnormal holiday weather has many Americans, especially millennials, concerned. As Reuters reported on Christmas Eve, in a poll conducted on the social chat app Yik Yak, which is popular on college campuses, 70 percent of respondents said they were worried about climate change. More than 20,000 users took part in the poll.

But while the symbolism of spring flowers threatening to bloom in the weeks after the winter solstice is certainly strong, the science doesn’t necessarily back up the popular notion that this is all owing to climate change. As Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told NPR earlier this month, this winter’s weird weather is largely because of El Niño.

“If you think about it, the high temperature over the weekend was 70,” he said, “so maybe without climate change, it would’ve been 69. I think it’s a fairly insignificant role, if any role at all.”