Bitter cold and snow have shut down Beijing after it received 4-8 inches (10-20 centimeters) of snow on Sunday, the largest snowfall since 1951, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Guo Hu, the head of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau linked the storm to global climate change.
“In the context of global warming, extreme atmospheric flows are causing extreme climate incidents to appear more frequently, such as the summer’s rain storms and last year’s icestorm disaster in southern China,” Hu told the Beijing News.
The city is also facing the its lowest temperatures in 40 years.
While some have pointed to the recent cold spell and heavy snow falls across the northern hemisphere as undercutting the theory of climate change, climatologists have been saying for years that climate change is expected to increase extreme weather. Climatologists state that while it is not possible to link a single weather event to climate change, a pattern of extreme weather—such as unusual increases in precipitation, droughts, floods, and more intense hurricanes—is just one consequence of a warming world.
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