Is there a connection between the January heat wave that is sweeping the East Coast and man-made global warming?

Scientists say yes — in this way: What they know for sure is the warm winter fits the pattern, exactly, that has long been predicted for manmade global warming of more and more frequent unseasonable warm spells.

While there were freak weather events like this in the past, even before the Industrial Age started pumping out more greenhouse gases, they were rare.

But in recent decades they have increased.

There has been "a fairly rapid rise of globally average temperatures, also temperatures in the United States, since about the mid-1970s," said David Easterling of the National Climate Data Center.

The records from the National Climate Data Center show that over the last 55 years, especially the last 20, the number of unusually warm days and warm nights has steadily increased. Source...