Britain gets flooded, America gets attacked by the "Polar Vortex"

It sounds like Hollywood has been drafted in to write the news for America!

The extreme weather has lead to impressive pictures from around Britain, and some staggering ones from the States.

Spot the difference!

Chicago from above

This blog tends to focus on the negative aspects of these extreme events, but will anything positive come out of this weather? The Guardian seems to think so: with wind power, water supplies and wildlife all set to get a boost. Not to mention the surfers:

Surf's up off the French coast. [Photograph: Gaizka Iroz/AFP/Getty Images]

Attributing extreme weather to climate change

Can this weather be attributed to climate change? (If you've been reading this blog you should know the answer already...) No, at least not yet. Attribution is a tricky business, although there's reason to think that a warming Arctic may lead to events like these (Cohen et al. 2010). From the article:

Further, and somewhat counterintuitively, the severe cold winter weather may be attributed to boundary forcing changes consistent with an overall warming planet. A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and as the interior of the NH [Northern Hemisphere] continents cool in fall, this can lead to increased snowfall. And as argued here, more extensive fall snow cover contributed to the extreme negative AO [Arctic Oscillation] observed during the winter of 2009-2010.

So if anyone claims that the current weather in the States in anyway disproves that global warming is happening, you can point them towards the above article. And I wouldn't be surprised at all to see attribution studies for the current extreme events in the next 6-9 months.