President Donald Trump, who has dismissed the scientific consensus on climate change, once again brushed aside concerns on Friday by incorrectly suggesting that the major winter storm expected to affect much of the U.S. this weekend refutes evidence that the planet is warming.
“An unprecedented cold wave is expected to impact 40 states. This is rarely witnessed,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday. “Could the environmental extremists please clarify — WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???”
The storm is predicted to deliver destructive ice, substantial snowfall, and strong winds that may affect over 230 million people nationwide from Friday through Monday. At least 14 states, plus Washington, D.C., have declared emergencies in advance of the storm, dubbed Winter Storm Fern by The Weather Channel. The approaching severe weather has triggered warnings about hazardous cold, extended power outages, and travel disruptions, with meteorologists cautioning that the storm could be devastating.
However, the notion that harsh winter weather like this disproves climate change, as Trump implied, is incorrect.
“Being a self-proclaimed ‘environmental radical,’ it’s annoying to need to clarify this each winter,” states Christopher Callahan, a climate science professor at Indiana University Bloomington. “Earth continues to have seasons, and we’ll experience winter conditions regardless of climate change impacts.”
Callahan notes that Earth’s axial tilt creates seasons—during parts of the year when the northern hemisphere tilts away from the sun, it experiences winter while the southern hemisphere has summer. And despite climate change, Earth continues to have daily weather variations.
“Since climate change is fundamentally a long-term pattern, you can see fluctuations around that trend; there can be variations around a sustained rise in temperature,” Callahan explains. “So it’s completely normal for us to still experience specific storms or weather events even as the planet’s climate warms overall.”
Scientists concur that climate change is generally producing shorter, warmer winters. Studies also show climate change can intensify certain extreme weather events—including heat waves, torrential rain, major floods, droughts, severe wildfires, and hurricanes—more severely. Some researchers have proposed that climate change might also be intensifying winter storms, though Callahan says there remains “real scientific disagreement” on this point.
Yet scientists do concur, he adds, that as Earth’s atmosphere warms, it holds more moisture, producing more precipitation, including snow. “Each degree of warming adds more moisture to the atmosphere, which we clearly observe in summer with extreme rainfall,” Callahan states. “So you could envision scenarios where winter storms produce greater precipitation and thus more snow than previously.”
