by Simon Donner

I have an opinion piece in the Vancouver Sun responding to a deceptive column about climate change science and climate scientists published the previous week. My naïve hope in writing the piece was not to start a public fight (my twitter feed, and inbox are testaments to that naïveté). Rather it was to help end a public fight, by encouraging people, particularly newspaper editors, to ignore the misleading rhetoric of organized “contrarian” movement and move on to writing more about addressing climate change.

The problem with the public conversation about climate change is that not everyone plays by the same rules.

The majority of scientists follow the scientific method — a systematic approach to building knowledge. Starting in the 1820s, scientists began accumulating evidence, through the slow process of hypothesis testing and data collection, that adding carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere would warm the planet.

See the Sun for the rest of the article.

by Meghan Beamish

The Winter Olympics have started again. Four years ago, we hosted them here in Vancouver, and it was one of the mildest winters on record. They had to helicopter in snow for many of the events. This week in Sochi, the forecast is warm, but they have been making and storing snow to prepare for the event.

Which begs the question: with a warming climate, what is the fate of future Winter Olympics?  Nature just published an article with this awesome graphic showing the “Downhill forecast” for future winter games. Click on the image for more details!

Temperatures will return to well above normal by the weekend

by Simon Donner

The quote of vortex week comes from Weather Underground climate historian Christopher Burt:

The only significant thing about the cold wave is how long it has been since a cold wave of this force has hit for some portions of the country–18 years, to be specific. Prior to 1996, cold waves of this intensity occurred pretty much every 5-10 years. In the 19th century, they occurred every year or two (since 1835). Something that, unlike the cold wave, is a truly unprecedented is the dry spell in California and Oregon, which is causing unprecedented winter wildfires in Northern California.

This week was extremely cold across much of North America, thanks to a dip in the jet stream bringing cold Arctic air far south into the United States. Many minimum temperature records were broken.

Broken records are a normal thing in a stable climate. The dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans means that low and high surface air temperature records are broken in some locations every year.

What’s abnormal is that the climate is warming, due to human activity. The average weather is warming and record cold snaps, like this week’s, are becoming less common. Thanks to that, our psychological baseline for weather has shifted. What today seems remarkable and unprecedented was actually not that unusual in past winters. We just have short memories.