The Extreme Cold in the Context of a Warmer Planet and a Cooler Solar Cycle.

While climate change leads to higher global mean temperatures, more frequent extremely cold events (ECE) have been reported in many places in the past few years. Recent studies on extreme weather are primarily focused on extreme heat, floods, and wildfires. Extreme cold is much less studied. However, extreme cold could cause severe economic damage, human threats, and global transportation disruption. In addition, our solar system is experiencing a weak solar cycle (SC), which raises interesting questions about the Sun-climate interaction. While SC impacts on the climate are mainly in the stratosphere and above, there could be indirect effects at the surface. How ECEs change in the context of a warmer planet and a cooler SC is a fascinating but rarely studied topic. We analyzed the ECE frequency and its possible correlation with the SC using temperature data from NOAA at five selected stations during the past five decades. The results do not suggest a decreasing trend in ECEs. Some stations even show increasing trends of ECEs. At one station, we found a possible correlation between ECEs occurrences with the SC, which could be the first evidence of SC impacts on the surface ECEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]