Bitter bouts of unusually cold days will become less frequent in much of the Northern Hemisphere as the planet warms, two new studies suggest.
Some scientists had suggested that winter cold snaps would become more common in the future as Arctic warming caused frigid polar winds to waver and dip southward. But that wind waviness is minor compared with other expected climate changes, researchers report in the March issue of the Journal of Climate. Using climate simulations, they found that the shrinking temperature difference between the Arctic and lower latitudes will stabilize temperatures in the hemisphere.