(Reuters) – Unusually warm western Pacific waters linked to global warming may be the paradoxical cause of a bone-chilling winter in parts of the United States this year, a scientific study said on Thursday.
The theory contrasts with other experts’ views, including that the freeze was simply a freak natural event or that it was linked to a thawing of the Arctic in recent years that sent a blast of cold air south.
“People’s reaction when they sit under 10 feet of snow is to say ‘this cannot be man-made climate change’,” said Professor Tim Palmer of Oxford University, who published his research in the journal Science. “But there is a plausible link,” he told Reuters.
He said a strengthening of trade winds had led to a build-up of warm water in the western tropical Pacific, aggravated in recent years by global warming from man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.