The National Weather Service offered a gust of sanity to the media’s whirlwind of climate alarmism, just before a blizzard struck the east coast. According to National Weather Service meteorologist Mark Jackson, “There's no such thing as a climate change storm, just like there’s no such thing as an El Nino storm.”
Jackson was discussing weather events with MSNBC correspondent Steve Patterson, who asked on Jan. 22, if the blizzard was connected to climate change. Jackson did claim there was a "trend" though.
“What we do see is the trend for these kinds of storms, it is increasing through the years,” said Jackson.
But existing scientific literature has cast some doubts on whether a trend exists for increasing east coast winter storms in recent years. According to Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., peer-reviewed literature on the frequency and trend of storms indicated that “detection of trends in winter storms has not been achieved.” He is a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Patterson asked Jackson about climate change after mentioning the news from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that 2015 was the hottest year on record. But even if temperatures were warmer overall, that shouldn’t have caused the blizzard. Meteorologists say snowstorms occur with colder weather, not warmer.
According to meteorologist and Chief Forecaster at WeatherBELL analytics Joseph D’Aleo, “The fact is the snows occur in colder regimes. December was warm and SNOWLESS. It turned colder this month and POW.”
Patterson’s MSNBC colleague Chris Hayes connected climate change to news about the blizzard on Jan 20. Hayes claimed that the storm surge resulting from the blizzard was caused in part by climate change and its effects on rising sea levels.
