"As another winter nears its close, we bid farewell to the season of merriment, good cheer and inane arguments about global warming.
If you think global warming is nonsense, winter offers many cold things to gesture at. “Behold,” you will say, brandishing a snowball, “global warming is a lie.” If, on the other hand, you’re terrified of global warming, you might startle at its shadow. A single unseasonably mild day becomes just more proof that the world is ending.
Fortunately, we don’t need to depend on people’s fears and vague intuitions to know how winter is changing. For that, we have high-resolution temperature data. In fact, I can tell you that in 86 percent of the contiguous United States, winters are trending warmer since 1980."
Harry Stevens reports for the Washington Post March 1, 2024.