You asked: How does global warming cause more extreme weather?

Here’s how it works. Humans continue to release enormous amounts of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. Like a pane of glass, these gases allow much of the sunlight to pass through the atmosphere as shortwave solar radiation. But once it reaches the surface, much of this energy is absorbed and re-emitted as longer wave radiation, which we experience as heat.

Some escapes back into space. But the thickening layer of greenhouse gases means more and more is trapped below the atmosphere. To feel how this works, try sitting (briefly) in a car on a hot sunny day.

This heats things up, of course. Since the late 1800s, temperatures have already risen 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit). This also sends more moisture from evaporation into the atmosphere, increasing the size and frequency of heavy precipitation. It can even cause localized cooling or snowstorms.

In parts of Siberia, for example, snowfall appears to be increasing. As sea ice melts in the Arctic Ocean, more water is evaporating into the atmosphere. That’s boosting cloudiness and snowfall, say scientists in Environmental Research Letters. The rising snowfall is shifting weather patterns, bringing even more frigid air from the poles to lower latitudes during the winter.

But that’s an exception. Localized cooling doesn’t change the fact that the Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than anywhere else on the planet, and we’re headed for a dangerously hot world.

Complex interactions like these make the effects of climate change specific to each place on the globe, even if there are a few cool spots.