Is it soon the end of the freezing winters? The most extreme cold waves will soon belong to the past. A recent study, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) and conducted by researchers from the National Meteorological Research Center (Météo-France/CNRS) and the Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute, reveals that these exceptional events, Formerly feared, become increasingly rare under the effect of global warming.
For several decades, the human imprint on the climate has upset the weather balances. The intensification of heat waves, the multiplication of droughts and the increase in intense precipitation are now well documented realities. But what about cold waves? Are they doomed to disappear?
Four cold periods analyzed
By analyzing four intense cold episodes that occurred in recent years – in Western Europe in 2012, in China in 2016, Texas in 2021 and Brazil in 2022 – researchers have shown that the probability of reliving such events is extremely weak. “The results of our research suggest that the most intense cold waves, and the frozen landscapes associated with them in the average latitude regions, are disappearing or have already disappeared due to climate change of human origin “Explains Aurélien Ribes, climatologist and main author of the study.
The most striking example is that of February 2012, where France had been plunged into freezing cold due to a mass of air from Russia. The study reveals that without the influence of human activities, such an event would have been four times more likely. Worse still: the probability that a cold wave as intense occurred again by 2100 is less than 10 %.
Confirmed trends in France
The trends observed in France confirm this observation. The latest cold wave referenced by Météo-France dates back to February 2018, and extreme cold episodes are becoming increasingly rare and less intense for 35 years. The harsh winters that had marked history, like those of 1956, 1963, 1985 and 1987, now seem relegated to the past.
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In parallel, the increase in heat waves becomes an increasingly worrying phenomenon. Many studies provide for record temperatures in the decades to come, far beyond all that humanity has known so far. Thus, the transformation of the climate manifests itself as much by the erasure of freezing winters as by the intensification of heat waves. And the magnitude of these upheavals will depend directly on future greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
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