Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 14/2/2024; Author: Mladen Lakić
One article described unusually severe snowstorms in Japan and America as proof that global warming is a “myth”, and possibly a result of “government weather modification”. This is not true. Extreme weather conditions are one of the consequences of climate change and global warming.
Content denying the impact of human activity on climate change is frequently found on social media and web portals. Such posts frequently diminish or entirely deny the existence of climate phenomena. Raskrinkavanje has frequently written about such inaccurate claims, and a review of these topics that marked the year 2024 is available here.
On February 5, 2025, web portal Nulta tacka published an article in which global warming, a consequence of climate change, is called a myth. It was titled:
Weather modification? A massive snowstorm hit Japan, record precipitation in 12 hours!
The article states that at the beginning of February, a snowstorm with record precipitation was recorded in Japan. It also mentions that in January, a severe snowstorm was recorded in America in areas where it was not expected. The article concludes with the following rhetorical question:
If it is not government manipulation of weather conditions, what could be behind these strange weather phenomena that have completely shattered the myth of “global warming”?
Climate change and its consequences
The source of the article on the web portal Nulta tacka is the website Infowars, where the same claims were published in English on February 4, 2025. Nulta tacka frequently publishes disinformative content, and some examples of false claims we have written about can be found here, here, and here. Infowars is an American website known for publishing far-right and disinformative content (1, 2).
The United Nations defines climate change as long-term changes in temperatures and weather patterns. This phenomenon is partly a natural process on our planet, but human activities since the 1800s are considered one of the most significant factors influencing climate change.
Global warming is one aspect of climate change. The evidence for it was highlighted by NASA and includes increasing global temperatures, ocean warming, reduction of ice and snow cover, glacier retreat, sea level rise, and the decline of Arctic ice. We wrote more about this in an analysis available here.
The scientific consensus is that climate change is real: 97% of scientists agree that humans have a strong influence on climate change and global warming.
As part of our prebunking series called “Uncovering”, we have written about disinformation and facts regarding climate change and its consequences (1, 2, 3, 4). One of these analyses explains that some extreme weather events are a consequence of climate change. The frequency and scale of extreme weather events have intensified precisely due to the impact of climate change (1, 2).
There is a wealth of evidence that climate change affects various weather conditions to a greater or lesser extent, whether it be extreme precipitation, heat waves, wildfires, or droughts (1, 2, 3).
Portraying climate change as a result of human “weather modification” is incorrect. Raskrinkavanje has written about the fact that climate change is real and not a cover for deliberate weather modification in an analysis available here. Such claims have also been shared in foreign languages. For example, in a 2021 analysis, Reuters emphasized that a range of experts explained how claims that climate change is actually a result of weather modification have no scientific basis.
“It is not possible that our current efforts at deliberately changing the weather are responsible for our unintended climate changes through greenhouse gas emissions”, said Steven Siems, co-chair of the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Expert Team on Weather Modification.
“Anyone making such claims is completely uninformed about both climate change and the science of weather modification”.
A spokesperson for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) added the following: “The most common, and indeed the only widely used, weather modification technique is cloud seeding to enhance precipitation. The technology is quite rudimentary, and the results are highly localized”, he said.
Cloud seeding helps form ice crystals and uses a small amount of a harmless, natural compound called silver iodide (AgI), which is released from aeroplanes when a storm passes through certain seeding areas.
Extreme snowfall does not “disprove” global warming
As explained on Climate.gov, an American website dedicated to climate science and information, the answer to whether record snowstorms prove that global warming is not happening is – no.
Snowstorms require two things: moisture and low air temperatures. There are many places where winter temperatures would have to rise by 5.5, 11, or even 16.5 degrees Celsius for snowfall to stop. Until then, snowstorms remain entirely possible, and natural climate patterns and random variability will continue to lead to unusually cold and snowy winters in various locations.
The article emphasizes that a complete analysis of this phenomenon must consider multi-year or even multi-decade data. For example, the mentioned article states that between 1961 and 2010 in the US, “most extreme snowstorms occurred in seasons that were colder and wetter than average, about 35% of snow seasons that produced extreme snow events were warmer than average, and 30% were drier than average”.
Claims that global warming should logically result in snow-free weather, thus giving rise to conspiracy theories that global warming does not exist, are unserious to some scientists. In an article published by USA Today in 2022, atmospheric science professor Daniel Chavas was quoted as saying that such comments do not frustrate him because he sees them as an opportunity to factually discuss “climate, seasons, and climate change” if there is interest.
Former Columbia University professor Julio Friedmann explained that “as you add energy to the system, both extremes grow. You can have ice storms in Texas as well as 33 million people displaced in Pakistan due to heat and floods”.
Another expert, climate physicist Jason Smerdon from Columbia University, explained that “global warming will not stop the seasons, but it causes long-term trends in winter conditions that are strong and accelerating”.
The American fact-checking platform Lead Stories analyzed claims in 2024 that global warming is not real because May 1984 was warmer than May 2024. Based on the views of a group of climate scientists cited in this analysis, it was concluded that short-term temperature changes do not indicate that long-term global warming data is inaccurate or that global warming is not real.
In an analysis published on January 16, 2024, National Geographic referenced a 2017 study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, which concluded that “Arctic air is increasingly reaching southern latitudes, and as a result of it, North America can expect harsher winters”. It also noted that a 2018 study published in the journal Nature Communications found the same connection between warmer Arctic temperatures and colder North American winters.
Therefore, snowstorms in Japan and the US are not proof that global warming is a myth, nor are they a result of any “government intervention” or climate modification. Based on the analysis presented, claims from the article published by Nulta tacka, are rated as fake news and a conspiracy theory.
