Scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) claim there is “no evidence” to support a direct correlation between climate change and cold temperatures due to last week’s polar vortex.
Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at UAH, shared a graph he and UAH professor of atmospheric science John Christy assembled that showed cold waves in the East and Midwest, which dated back to 1895.
The climate change theory says the dwindling of the Arctic sea ice has caused a negative impact on the polar vortex. Spencer, with the assistance of his colleagues, disputed that claim.
“As can be seen in the plot below, there is no evidence in the data supporting the claim that decreasing Arctic sea ice in recent decades is causing more frequent displacement of cold winter air masses into the eastern U.S., at least through the winter of 2017-18,” Spencer wrote Thursday on his Global Warming blog.
Spencer’s analysis was devoted to the study of cold waves in 27 Midwestern and Eastern states that lasted more than two days and featured temperatures below the fifth percentile of daily January maximums.
“When these cold air outbreaks continued to menace the United States even as global warming has caused global average temperatures to creep upward, an explanation had to be found,” Spencer said in the blog post. “After all, snow was supposed to be a thing of the past now.”
Spencer concluded that a “connection between Eastern U.S. cold waves and Arctic sea ice is speculative, at best. Just like most theories of climate change.”
Kyle Morris also contributes daily to Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @RealKyleMorris.
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