USA Today, AP and others, cold and snow in America not caused by climate change – Watts?

Recently, a range of mainstream news outlets, including USA Today,,,,,, AP News,,,,,, BBC Futureand fast companyhave issued articles claiming that the record cold and heavy snowfalls in the United States in January 2025 will become greater or less due to climate change, or at least this connection cannot be ruled out. This is wrong. Their argument hinges on the increasingly popular but scientifically dubious notion that climate change is disrupting the polar vortex, causing icy Arctic air to dip southward into midlatitudes like the United States. While this explanation is neatly packaged to fit the “everything bad is caused by climate change” narrative, the science supporting these claims is weak, unproven, and riddled with contradictions.

The notion that extreme cold is the product of global warming flies in the face of historical records and atmospheric science fundamentals. These stories rely on cherry-picked data and untested theories while ignoring decades of meteorological knowledge about natural climate variability. As discussed below, there is no reliable evidence to support these claims. Instead, mainstream media narratives rely on flashy headlines and alarmist language, leaving out inconvenient facts that undermine their sensationalist conclusions.

Let us first summarize the claims made in these articles:

1. USA Today Describing recent Arctic explosions as being caused by disrupted polar vortices, it is linked to the melting of Arctic ice said to be caused by human-induced climate change.
2. AP News Echoing similar ideas, it was suggested that rapid Arctic warming could lead to instability in the jet stream, allowing cold air to “spill southward.”
3. BBC Future Going a step further and calling this phenomenon “climate destabilization” means that climate change destabilizes established weather patterns, making extreme cold more likely.
4. fast company Taking the same approach, the claim that “climate change is making the polar vortex worse” is not only speculative, but also directly contradicts other climate research.

A closer look at these claims that there is a link between changes in the polar vortex and climate change reveals the logic and scientific issues behind these claims.

The polar vortex is a long-standing, well-documented feature of the upper atmosphere—decades before politicized climate scientists and media bad actors started talking about climate change. The polar vortex was first described in 1853, but the term became popular in the media in 2014 after a cold spell in North America. A polar vortex is a large-scale low-pressure system that forms in the stratosphere in the polar regions during winter. Its strength and location are affected by multiple factors, including natural atmospheric variability such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

When the polar vortex weakens, it can allow Arctic air to gradually flow into midlatitudes, causing cold weather and blizzards. This weak one is not a new casting phenomenon related to climate change. This is part of natural variability. Similar cold bursts were recorded in the 1970s, before carbon dioxide levels became a focus of global policy discussions. In fact, those cold bursts led many climate scientists to start warning of an impending ice age. Obviously, that never happened.

In fact, there is no scientific consensus on the link between Arctic warming and polar vortex behavior. as climate Discussion, Empirical data indicate that there are no consistent trends in the frequency or intensity of polar vortex disruptions over the past few decades. This contradicts claims that weakening of the polar vortex is becoming increasingly common due to human-induced warming.

If we put aside speculation for a moment and look at actual data, the picture becomes clearer:

1. arctic ice trends: While Arctic ice has gone through periods of decline, recent measurements suggest the Arctic is not in a “death spiral.” In fact, Arctic sea ice extent has been relatively stable during the winter since 2012. Melting Arctic ice destabilizes the polar vortex, which simply cannot be scrutinized when actual sea ice trends are examined, as noted watt,,,,,, Citing government data.
2. extremely extreme in context: Historical weather data suggests that extreme cold events in the United States are neither new nor increasing. Cold outbreaks similar to the current one have been regularly documented for at least the past two centuries, including brutally cold winters in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. Documentary evidence from 18^Th and 17^Th For centuries, extreme cold was common even then. The recent cold is noteworthy, but not unprecedented.
3. jet flow variability: Claims that the jet stream is becoming “fluctuating” or more erratic due to climate change are also not supported by reliable evidence. The journal's 2021 research Geophysical Research Letter found no statistically significant increase in jet stream fluctuations or meanderings in recent decades. Glimpse into climate: The polar vortex shows how jet streams behave, like the polar vortex itself, which is driven and sustained by natural atmospheric patterns.

These media articles also conveniently ignore the inconvenient fact that climate models (considered the gold standard in climate science) tend to accurately simulate the behavior of the polar vortex. If these models cannot reliably predict polar vortex behavior in a warm world, how can we reliably link this year's cold spell to climate change? The reality is that most of these claims are based on post hoc rationalization rather than sound science.

The so-called “warm Arctic continent” hypothesis is often used to explain these events. The theory is that warming in the Arctic disrupts the polar vortex, causing more cold air to spill southward. However, studies such as the American Meteorological Society (American Meteorological Society) titled “Evidence Against a Physical Link Between Arctic Expansion and Midlatitude Weather“, The link between Arctic warming and midlatitude outbreaks has been found to be tenuous at best. In short, this hypothesis lacks predictive power and is contradicted by many observational studies.

Additionally, another related study is the 2019 paper natural climate change,title “Projected weakening of the stratospheric polar vortex in response to rising greenhouse gases“ By Amy Butler and Lorenzo Polvani This suggests that while some climate models indicate changes in the intensity of the polar vortex under warming conditions, Arctic warming is associated with Actual observed connections between midlatitude weather are inconsistent.

In short, based on available research and data, there is no clear cause-and-effect relationship that suggests climate change is causing changes in the polar vortex, its frequency, intensity, its regularity or the pattern of its effects.

It's worth noting that the record is ironically caused by global warming. Mainstream media have repeatedly warned of the “end of snow” in recent decades, claiming that due to rising global temperatures, snow will become a thing of the past. A striking example is the 2000 article independent Claiming “Kids just don’t know what snow is.” Additionally, published in new york times There are also warnings of the end of snow in 2014 and 2024 due to global warming. Yet here we are in 2025, witnessing some of the coldest, snowiest winters in recent memory, and the narrative conveniently shifts to the present, blaming extreme cold and snow on global warming. Accusations of such contradictory weather phenomena – no snow/recorded snow, monsoons/strengthening monsoons, accelerating Atlantic currents/slowing Atlantic currents, droughts/increased rainfall, should raise red flags regarding the credibility of these claims.

Conclusion: Media drives narrative at the expense of science

What we are seeing here is not science. This is narrative construction. The cold and snowfall in the United States in recent years is not evidence of climate change but of the natural variability at work that has been part of the Earth's climate system for thousands of years. If anything, the rush to blame every indifference on “global warming” aka climate change fuels the desperation of a growing narrative that has lost ground in reality and credibility.

It’s time for journalists to stop treating speculation as fact and ask readers to demand accountability in climate reporting. Climate change occurs, but there is no evidence of crisis. Furthermore, interpretations of short-term weather events to promote ideas of catastrophic climate change, because they ignore data and long-standing meteorological knowledge, inform rather than mislead, eroding trust in science and journalism in the process while not It was necessary to shock the public.

Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts is a senior fellow in environment and climate at the Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of and behind the camera since 1978 and currently produces daily broadcast forecasts. He created weather graphics presentation systems for television, professional weather instruments, and co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He runs the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com, the most viewed website in the world.

Originally published in Climaterealism

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