TIME: The Year That Winter Forgot: Is It Climate Change?

"...a big-picture perspective does indicate that truly cold temperatures are becoming less and less common in the U.S. To take one example, since 1996, there have been 48 high-temperatures records set in New York City's Central Park — and one just one record low. Since 1980, nearly every year in the U.S. has seen annual average temperatures higher than the long-term average. Confusion and uncertainty still exists over the exact impact of climate change on extreme-weather events like hurricanes or tornadoes, but there's one thing we can be pretty sure of: it will be less cold.

To many people that's probably not a bad thing. Extreme cold isn't just uncomfortable and inconvenient — it's also dangerous, particularly for older or poorer people who can't protect themselves from the elements as well as others. But warmer winters can change nature in dangerous ways as well. Western bark beetles — which have ravaged the pine trees of the west — are thriving because they're no longer being knocked out by very cold winters. Dry warm weather can worsen the risk of forest fires, and short winters can end up intensifying the spring-allergy season. A decline in mountain snowpack in the west can mean less water for dry states that are accustomed to meltwater runoff in the spring.

And then there's the less quantifiable, more lyrical value of winter — a cold, frozen, crystalline season that's beautiful and punishing all at once. As the British poet Anne Bradstreet said, "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant." Climate change disrupts the rhythm of the seasons, that regular passage of time and temperature we assumed was fixed. It turns out we may be wrong, and winter as we know it could one day be a season of the past. As we keep altering the climate, who can tell what else might follow it into unplanned obsolescence."

To read more, visit: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2104040,00.html#ixzz1jAannRbq