Temperature variability

Temperature variability relates to the temperature range occurring within a short time span, such as day-to-day or month-to-month fluctuations at a given location. Evidence suggests that this variability is increasing with climate change, adding to the overall trend of global warming. As the Arctic warms faster than the tropics, the jet stream weakens and meanders, causing unusual swings between hot and cold conditions across the Northern Hemisphere. This fuels more extreme events, such as record-breaking heat waves alongside occasional severe cold snaps, and creates unstable seasonal patterns like warm spells followed by sudden freezes.

A warmer atmosphere also holds more energy and moisture, which amplifies these extremes and makes weather patterns harder to predict. Statistically, scientists see this as a widening spread in temperature data: not just higher averages, but larger fluctuations that increase the frequency of hot extremes.

These changes have important consequences for ecosystems, agriculture, infrastructure, and human health, since greater variability can be just as disruptive as steady warming. In this way, changes in temperature variability can produce impacts similar to those caused by rising mean temperatures (see Changing temperature).