Is ‘weather whiplash’ yet another symptom of climate change?

Once a colloquial phrase used to describe surprising, rapid shifts in weather conditions, ‘weather whiplash’ is being continuously validated by climate change studies and is reportedly getting worse. 

We all misjudge the weather from time to time, but what we’re talking about here is far more dramatic than mistakenly opting to leave an umbrella at home. 

Prior to New Year’s Eve in California, the state had endured a prolonged and severe drought stretching some three years. Forecasts had offered little hope of relief for residents, when the heavens suddenly opened on the night. It wasn’t a cause for celebration, however. 

Fast forward a few weeks to the present, and the Golden State has been continuously battered by torrential downpours, extreme storms, and flooding which have taken lives and destroyed both homes and highways. It feels like a sick joke. 

Between 10 and 20 inches of snow have fallen in some locations, and recently parched farmlands have been supplanted by raging rivers. Rainfall totals are reportedly 600 percent above normal patterns and 24 trillion gallons of water have fallen since late December. 

The term for this paradoxical and unforeseen seesaw of weather extremes has a name coined by meteorologists, and it’s called ‘weather whiplash’.

How does weather whiplash occur? 

Not exclusive to precipitation, temperatures can fluctuate on a freakish scale with weather whiplash also. 

In late December, conditions plunged into negative double-digits across the Midwest and East. Some 50 inches of snow suddenly fell on Buffalo, New York, killing more than two dozen people. 

A matter of days later, temperatures in many of these areas soared to between 30 and 40, and in some regions, even 70 degrees Fahrenheit – several cities even reached new records of temperature warmth for the season. Nuts, right? 

Though there is much research to be done to find definitive causation, known weather whiplash is attributable to three major things: parched soil causing water build up on rivers and roads, low-pressure winds of cold air blowing in from the Arctic, and warm air drying out vegetation. 

On the latter point, warm air can suck moisture from the ground causing wildfires or droughts, but not just that. It also holds about 7 percent more water per every degree Celsius. This means (theoretically) fewer rainstorms, but that those that do occur could be frankly biblical. 

At any given time, our fluid atmosphere can shift in wave patterns, so warm dense air could replace cooler air and vice versa. Complex relationships between temperature, density, pressure, and wind are subject to change at an instant, but climate change is likely playing a role in this rapid clash of extremes.

Get your neck brace ready. Weather whiplash — an abrupt shift from, say, a long drought to flash flooding (sound familiar?) — is likely to occur more often as the globe, and especially the Arctic, continue to warm. Our new study published today: https://t.co/kpaHITTRhb

— Dr. Jennifer Francis (@JFrancisClimate) September 8, 2022