Despite Obama administration claims that this year’s harsh winter is due to global warming, winters have have been getting colder in the past two decades, according to government climate data.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s recently released climate data shows that U.S. winters have cooled over the past 20 years at a rate of minus 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit per century.
Data from Rutgers University shows that the Northern Hemisphere has been seeing more snowfall in recent decades — at a rate of over 100,000 square kilometers per year. Last week the U.S. saw its second-highest snow extent on record ar 52,166,840 square kilometers. The only time on record that the country had more snow was in the second week of February in 1978 when there was 53,647,305 square kilometers of snow on the ground.
This particularly harsh winter has been touted by environmentalists, climate scientists and politicians as proof that global warming is happening. The argument goes that global warming has made the climate more extreme, so harsher winters will become more commonplace as will warmer summers.
Even the White House has jumped into the fray, arguing that the “polar vortex” — which has caused the middle and eastern parts of the U.S. to be pummeled by snow storms — is a product of global warming.
“A growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern that we can expect to see with increasing frequency as global warming continues,” said White House science czar John Holdren.
“If you’ve been hearing that extreme cold spells, like the one we’re having in the United States now, disproves global warming, don’t believe it,” Holdren added.
But data from NOAA and Rutgers has been cited as part of a growing body of evidence that the world is entering a cooling phase. Some scientists argue that such a phase is due to declining solar activity and natural climate cycles.
German scientists found last year that increasing solar activity and the 65-year Atlantic and Pacific Ocean oscillation cycle account for virtually all of the global warming since 1870 — when the “Little Ice Age” ended. But now solar activity is on the decline and ocean oscillation is in a cooling phase, meaning that the world could be headed for decades of cooling.
“Through [the de Vries solar cycle’s] influence the temperature will decrease until 2100 to a value like the one of the last ‘Little Ice Age’ 1870,” the scientists wrote.
“The empirical evidence continues to build within the climate science community that the world is experiencing some type of global cooling phase as a result of natural climate change forces,” according to the science blog C3 Headlines.
(H/T C3 Headlines and WUWT)
Follow Michael on Twitter and Facebook
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.