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CLIMATE CHANGE

Winter isn’t what it used to be

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 712–713 (2021)Cite this article

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Northern autumns and winters are getting warmer, and their weather is also getting blander. Observations and climate model simulations reveal that human activities have managed to make today’s weather measurably different than it was only a generation ago.

Human activities, especially those that emit carbon dioxide, have warmed the surface of our planet for at least the past century. These emissions have also affected other aspects of our global and local climate, albeit in more causally and spatially complex ways that have been harder to understand and observationally detect than the general warming trend. It is particularly challenging to connect our local experiences of daily weather with the long-term shifts in the global average climate. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Blackport et al.1 find that greenhouse gas emissions have led to decreased day-to-day temperature variability in the northern mid-latitudes, adding another dimension to our understanding of how we are changing our planet.

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Fig. 1: More stable winters.

Dimitar Chobanov / Alamy Stock Photo

References

  1. 1.

    Blackport, R., Fyfe, J. C. & Screen, J. A. Nat. Geosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00826-w (2021).

  2. 2.

    IPCC: Summary for Policymakers. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (eds Masson-Delmotte, V. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, in the press)

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  1. National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand

    Dáithí A. Stone

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  1. Dáithí A. Stone
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Correspondence to Dáithí A. Stone.

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Stone, D.A. Winter isn’t what it used to be. Nat. Geosci. 14, 712–713 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00832-y

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