As a meteorology major, Monday’s freak snowstorm was a big deal. I’m a member of the Penn State Storm Chase Team, whose large GroupMe chat was remarkably active all day and throughout the weekend leading up to the severe weather event. All of my friends always ask me for my input when they start to hear buzz about an incoming storm. With an event as unexpected as this one, I completely understand why it was such a hot topic on social media. However, I saw a number of people bring up the “global warming isn’t real if there is snow in April” argument, which gave me the idea for this blogpost.

While the effects of climate change used to be referred to almost exclusively as “global warming,” the phrase “climate change” has generally replaced it as a more accurate way to describe the widespread effects of unsustainable levels of human emissions. When scientists use the phrase “global warming” they are typically referring to human-induced global warming as opposed to the natural warming of the planet. This warming comes from a rapid increase in the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, like carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil, and gas. Global warming in itself refers to the rise in the average global temperature, while climate change is a more all-encompassing way of referring to the resulting effects of this warming.

Along with this distinction is also the difference between weather and climate. While weather is the short term atmospheric conditions that are taking place at any given time, climate is the overall patterns of this weather, including temperature, humidity, precipitation, etc. over longer periods of time like years or decades. While weather is extremely variable and has numerous factors that effect it, climate is much more predictable and constant. This makes it easy to track variability in climate and see it change over time. This is the case with climate change throughout the twenty-first century, because the temperature can be see increasing at much higher rates than it should be expected to. While climate naturally fluxuates over time, it does so gradually and with a certain pattern–recent trends have not lined up with these patterns at all and make it abundantly clear that it is the fault of human emission levels. The current increase in temperature is faster than any interglacial warm periods over the last million years, and the warming period aligns with the evolution of human agriculture and manufacturing.

Another aspect of climate change is its widespread effects on weather, making severe weather events more frequent and more severe than ever before. This means that there are record temperatures of both high and low temperatures, along with freak heatwaves and freak snowstorms. There are more frequent and intense tropical storms and hurricanes, along with increased numbers of both floods and droughts. This means that an unprecedented snowstorm in April does not mean that global warming or climate change are not real–if anything, it helps to prove their existence.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing and evaluating the state of the world in terms of climate change, recently released its sixth assessment report. This report is a fully comprehensive evaluation of mass amounts of science and research that is packaged into seventeen chapters and almost 3,000 total pages. It covers current trends and how they are predicted to continue in the future. Emission data is examined across a number of different domains, including agriculture, energy, urban systems, transportation, and more. Of course, there is also a heavy focus on the negative impacts that these trends are already having and the multitude of possible future detriments. A number of the later chapters of the report focus on potential policy changes that can be made in order to mitigate the potential risks, both at the global level and on smaller scales. However, there is a large focus on international collaboration and consistency in order for the changes to be the most effective.

The goal that the proposals aim to reach is limiting the effects of global warming to an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Humans have already raised the temperature by about 1.1 degrees, primarily because of fossil fuel usage. Although there was a significant decrease in emissions during the COVID-19 pandemic resulting from much lower rates of transportation and manufacturing, levels have been spiking recently in the post-pandemic world. The United Nations is now referring to the current climate situation as “an emergency.” Scientists are adamant about the fact that every fraction of a degree is extremely significant at this point, and the more we can do to get to net-zero emissions, the better.

A major focus of the policy suggestions in the report is the transition to clean and sustainable energy. Keeping the temperature below the 1.5 C degree level would require fossil fuel emissions to peak in 2025 and decrease by 43% by the end of the decade. This would require a significant increase in the amount of our energy coming from renewable sources like wind, solar, nuclear, and geothermal. There is also the possibility of storing carbon either underground or underwater with the use of facilities that have the technology to capture and convert the excess Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere into something that can be more easily stored. There are plans for one of these facilities to be built in Scotland by 2026, and research is actively being done into placing them in other parts of the world. In my research lab, I’m currently helping a team that is looking at the possibility of placing one of these facilities in the Chesapeake Bay that would store the Carbon Dioxide in the water.

While the IPCC’s report should serve as a wake-up call, many of the largest difficulties with solving the climate crisis center more around overcoming political opposition as opposed to the inability to solve it from a scientific standpoint. There is also the issue of people considering it to be an issue in the distant future that they do not have to attend to now, but rising sea levels and more frequent and more severe weather events are beginning to make people take the issue more seriously and increase their sense of urgency. The report does overall present an optimistic viewpoint, with the rate of growth of emissions continuing to flatten out, and presents a plan for the future that is beginning to appear more and more achievable with increasing technology.