If the planet is warming up, why is it so darned cold outside? - The Hill

Global warming can seem like an abstract concept when the thermometer is dropping and the ice is building up on your car windshield. But the counterintuitive fact is that they are connected. Weather models show that our increasingly warm planet is causing unstable day-to-day anomalies across the globe, and some of those are causing colder temperatures.

Global warming is well documented by four international weather research stations across the globe. July of 2019 was the hottest month on record in the 140 years we’ve been monitoring temperatures, and 9 of the 10 hottest Julys have been recorded just since 2005. The global temperature has increased overall 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since we started burning fossil fuels.

But all that heat is melting Arctic ice, which sends cold water rushing through our oceans. It’s also destabilizing the jet stream, the loop created when cold air from the Arctic sinks down to the equator, where it warms up and moves back north to the Arctic.

The disruptions in our weather patterns caused by a warmer planet are creating more and more intense storms, droughts and, in some areas, blizzards.

Watch the video to see what’s happening to our planet, day by day and decade by decade.

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