Yes, it has. A warming climate does not mean everything goes up a degree or two like a stovetop; it means that there is more energy (since warmth is energy, remember?) in atmospheric systems generally, which means more variation in weather patterns, and more extremes of weather as well.
It also means that atmospheric wind patterns and ocean currents can – and probably will – shift into new directions. This, too, will disrupt the weather patterns we are used to. The reason why the UK has temperatures closer to Boston (or even further south) than it does to Newfoundland, which is roughly the same latitude, is because of ocean currents. If it shifts, Britain drops into the deep freeze.
Even worse, some research has suggested that the whole of human history has had an atypically even pattern of weather independently of global warming, and that that time is over. That means we get a double whammy of more variation fueled by more energy.
A purely personal anecdote – I am using it as an illustration, not a proof, of which there is a great deal: the Boston area, where I live, along with New England, is famously difficult for weather prediction, because we are at the intersection of ocean weather (“Nor’ Easters”), Canadian cold fronts, and the weather patterns from the southwest. But we could usually predict if we were going to get snow (if not exactly how much) reliably. In the past three weeks, we have had two occasions where snow was not predicted the night before and we got it, two it was predicted to be “flurries” and we got several inches (a difference of a fraction of a few millimeters of water and 8 centimeters of water), and temperature ranges that went way higher and way lower than predicted within 24 hours. We have also set records for the highest and lowest temperatures in the area in February.
And to take perhaps a more unlikely example: blizzard warnings in Southern California!
Yes, it has. A warming climate does not mean everything goes up a degree or two like a stovetop; it means that there is more energy (since warmth is energy, remember?) in atmospheric systems generally, which means more variation in weather patterns, and more extremes of weather as well.
It also means that atmospheric wind patterns and ocean currents can – and probably will – shift into new directions. This, too, will disrupt the weather patterns we are used to. The reason why the UK has temperatures closer to Boston (or even further south) than it does to Newfoundland, which is roughly the same latitude, is because of ocean currents. If it shifts, Britain drops into the deep freeze.
Even worse, some research has suggested that the whole of human history has had an atypically even pattern of weather independently of global warming, and that that time is over. That means we get a double whammy of more variation fueled by more energy.
A purely personal anecdote – I am using it as an illustration, not a proof, of which there is a great deal: the Boston area, where I live, along with New England, is famously difficult for weather prediction, because we are at the intersection of ocean weather (“Nor’ Easters”), Canadian cold fronts, and the weather patterns from the southwest. But we could usually predict if we were going to get snow (if not exactly how much) reliably. In the past three weeks, we have had two occasions where snow was not predicted the night before and we got it, two it was predicted to be “flurries” and we got several inches (a difference of a fraction of a few millimeters of water and 8 centimeters of water), and temperature ranges that went way higher and way lower than predicted within 24 hours. We have also set records for the highest and lowest temperatures in the area in February.
And to take perhaps a more unlikely example: blizzard warnings in Southern California!
And thus we see it in action.