No, the Cold Doesn't Mean No Global Warming
Scientists say there's a difference between weather and climate.
Jan. 8, 2010 — -- No, the cold snap in some parts of the northern hemisphere (New York, Florida, Beijing, Northern India, Europe) does not mean that manmade global warming is not happening, or even that it's happening just a little less.
This is, of course, an old story...and more and more 5th graders are bringing it home from their science classes to get their parents up to date on the latest climate science.
Bottom line -- fast and simple? Three points:
Take a look at a piece, "Weather Is Not Climate," that my ABC News colleague Clayton Sandell and I filed on the same question three years ago.
In it, we spoke to Mark Serreze, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
"The fact that we had a couple of cool months doesn't say anything at all about long-term trends," said Serreze. "It's just a clear example of natural variability on the climate system. The long-term averages are decidedly toward a warming planet.
"We have a gradual warming of Earth's system, but that is interspersed with a strong natural variability in the system," he said. "This is just the way the system works."
Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, agreed.
"Weather is chaotic. It has an infinite amount of variability, and that's just the nature of weather," he said. "Weather dominates on a day-to-day basis, and there will be warmer periods and cooler periods. But it's the overall pattern that gives you the climate."
There is also a new piece by Malcolm Ritter, a science writer at The Associated Press. You can find it by clicking HERE.
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