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You can Google "does global warming cause extreme cold". Here are my first results:

"This Is Why Global Warming Is Responsible For Freezing Temperatures Across The U.S." (Forbes): https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/01/30/this...

"Climate change: Arctic warming linked to colder winters" (BBC): https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58425526

"How global warming can cause Europe's harsh winter weather" (DW) https://www.dw.com/en/cold-winter-global-warming-polar-vorte...

"Record cold, intense storms and tornadoes amid global warming: Could there be a connection?" (USA Today): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/02/17/global...

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Seems like selection bias to me. You can also Google "does global warming cause warmer winters" and get:

"How Warming Winters Are Affecting Everything": https://www.npr.org/2020/02/18/803125282/how-warming-winters...

"5 reasons why your warmer winter is so alarming": https://www.edf.org/blog/2020/02/12/5-reasons-why-your-warme...

"Winters are warming faster than summers. These US cities could lose weeks of freezing days by 2050." https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/12/20/18136006/c...

But the subject at hand isn't whether winters are going to be warmer. The topic was extreme weather events. And the question wasn't "is this indisputable gospel" or something, it was "where can I read about this?" Of course I biased towards selecting the links where you could read about it!

Well, the increased variability itself may be a part of the climate change.

I’ll give an anecdote. I’m working on a project that tracks the length of the rainy season over time in a certain region. There is no clear trend one way or another, but what does stick out as a super strong and clear trend is that the variability of both extremes occurring is increasing.

I don't want trash news articles. They establish nothing. Read the first one, it's not good. Want modelling from someone reputable like the IPCC that balances the offsetting forces and quantifies what to expect on net.

"50 percent more extreme cold weather events under RCP8.5"

Not

"This is how a polar vortex works, therefore there will be more cold weather events"

(which is obviously faulty logic since that doesn't account for an increasing mean temp, which is why modelling is needed to balance out these offsetting considerations)

See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28963266

You have to understand, it’s incredibly frustrating to try to have a serious conversation with someone who not only pulls out the intellectually lazy “[citation needed]” trope, but makes no specific demands about what citation is acceptable until after the fact, when they can deem respected news agencies like the BBC or DW as “trash” and demand more citations! Is that Forbes article “trash”? I don’t think so - it’s a clear explainer written for a layperson by someone well-credentialed, and I had no reason to think based on your comment that you were anything but a layperson.

Anyway - the next article, from the BBC, is a report on a study published in Science. The study is linked to in the text, it’s called “Linking Arctic variability and change with extreme winter weather in the United States” if you prefer papers over news articles summarizing them.

I was extremely specific in what I was asking for initially. I asked for evidence that the number of extreme cold events is going to be increased. None of the first two articles grapples with that claim. That's why I called them trash. They're trash in the sense that those sources aren't addressing the claim that I initially asked to see a citation for. They outline a mechanism that will lead to more cold spikes but it doesn't address my question of whether on net we are going to see more cold spikes given the offsetting impact of mean warming.

I reject the accusation that I'm pulling a "citation needed" trope. The citation I shared above, which more directly addresses what I'm asking and is from more reputable bodies than your citations, says the exact opposite thing to what you're claiming and so what I'm doing is not an example of this trope (which is where someone asks for a citation for a well established fact as a rhetorical device).

I suppose it’s debatable, but, rather than being “extremely specific”, I think a common-sense interpretation of “give me sources showing global warming will increase the number of extreme cold events” could be reasonably met with news articles reporting on and explaining papers showing “a mechanism that will lead to more cold spikes” - your words, emphasis mine, because “more” implies a greater number, as requested. And these kinds of articles are widely published, have been for years, and are easy to find. Your comment _reads_ like a demand for easily Google-able common knowledge, even if it wasn’t intended to be. And if it’s not the articles themselves that are “trash”, it’s even more rude and inflammatory to denigrate my effort to provide them to you as “trash”.

Anyway: it’s definitely interesting and surprising that the IPCC’s report states that extreme cold events will decrease, when you’ve got experts and studies and mechanisms claiming otherwise, not to mention non-stop record breaking winters. The IPCC report is 4000 pages long and I’m not qualified (or blessed with the time) to pick through it and reconcile those things. Maybe the IPCC paper doesn’t consider the impact climate change is having on the polar vortex settled enough to factor it in (at least one of the articles above claims it’s still not universally accepted); maybe, as you suggest, the net warming will offset it; maybe, as someone else suggests in that thread, we're operating on different definitions of "extreme"; maybe certain areas will see an increase of extreme cold spikes but on net they’ll go down around the surface of the planet, which depending on where they are still complicates the calculus in the fine article quite a bit - if Texas has increased days or intensity of extreme cold but Antarctica has less, well, there’s a whole lot more people who might die in Houston than at McMurdo Station, even if Antarctica is quite a bit bigger than Texas. I’ll revise my priors and was wrong to state with certainty that extreme cold events will increase given the IPCC report, but after a near-decade of unprecedented winter weather disasters happening annually and a well-established mechanism that explains it, I’m not willing to write the claim off.

I misspoke when I said "more". I meant to say "new" or "novel" in that sentence.

I reacted in such a way because I interpreted your initial response to be a "let me google that for you" flavor of borderline sarcasm, as if the question I was asking had an obvious answer and was clearly settled, when the articles you shared don't answer the question I was asking. My initial read on your sarcastic intention was confirmed when you accused me of repeating a "citations please" trope. So if you're going to take such a sarcastic approach, then I am not going to pretty up my language when you share news articles that do not address the question I'm asking.

  "when you’ve got experts and studies ... claiming otherwise"

Who claims otherwise? I'm still waiting for that. The articles you shared showed that there will be new cold snaps, not that the overall frequency of cold snaps will increase. These are related but very distinct questions, given that mean temperature rise is an offsetting factor that may or may not dwarf the mechanism being described.

  "there’s a whole lot more people who might die in Houston"

These are all fair points that need to be fleshed out. The mere question of whether there will be more cold snaps (however that's measured and defined) doesn't necessarily entail much insofar as deaths from cold goes. But I do want to see that question answered as a starting point.

Yes, hardly anyone reads the whole IPCC report, and the conclusions tend to deform or leave out important parts. I specifically remember the case of methane being an important greenhouse gas having been dropped some IPCC reports ago.

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