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Reader: Is it true that we have experienced extreme weather throughout history starting from 1888? One of the worst blizzards on record battered the East Coast in mid-March of 1888.
FactCheck.org Science Editor Jessica McDonald: It’s true that extreme weather has always occurred, including before 1888. But just because something has always happened doesn’t mean it’s not also changing now -- which is the case with extreme weather in a warming world.
Scientific research shows that as people have burned more fossil fuels and released more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, the planet has warmed and this has made certain forms of extreme weather more common and/or more intense. This is most clear for extreme heat, but also applies to heavy rainfall events, drought, tropical cyclones and fire weather.
Some people cite historical examples of bad storms to argue that climate change isn’t happening. This is similar to the claim that because there are still very cold days (hello, this past week in much of the U.S.!), the planet couldn’t be warming. But these are logical fallacies. Both can be true: extreme events can have happened in the past, and cold days can happen now or in the future, and the Earth can still be, on average, much warmer than before and experiencing more, or more severe, extreme weather as a result.
In terms of blizzards, evidence suggests that in the future, while our hotter planet will experience fewer snowstorms overall, the risk of extreme snowfall events will actually stay about the same. This is because more winter storms will end up dropping rain, rather than snow -- but the snowstorms that do happen will be bigger, and dump more snow.
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