Hong Kong CNN —
Tens of millions across East Asia braved a severe cold snap on Wednesday, as sub-zero temperatures and heavy snowfall caused travel chaos during the Lunar New Year holiday, with climate experts warning such extreme weather events have become the “new norm”.
South Korea issued strong snow warnings this week, as temperatures fell to minus 15 degrees Celsius (minus 5 degrees Fahrenheit) in the capital Seoul and plummeted to record lows in other cities, officials said.
On the popular tourist island of Jeju, inclement weather prompted the cancellation of hundreds of flights, according to the Central Headquarters for Disaster and Safety Response, while large waves forced passenger ships to remain in port.
“Cold air from the North Pole reached South Korea directly,” Korea Meteorological Administration spokesman Woo Jin-kyu told CNN after touring through Russia and China.
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Woo said that while scientists take a long-term view of climate change, “we can look at this extreme weather — extremely hot weather in summer and extremely cold weather in winter — as one of the signals of climate change.”
Across the border in Pyongyang, North Korean authorities warned of extreme weather conditions as the cold snap swept across the Korean peninsula. Temperatures in parts of North Korea are expected to drop below minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit), state media reported.
In neighboring Japan, hundreds of domestic flights were canceled Tuesday and Wednesday due to heavy snowfall and strong winds that impacted visibility. Major airlines Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways canceled a total of 229 flights.
Meanwhile, bullet trains between northern Fukushima and Shinjo stations have been suspended, Japan Railway Group said.
China’s meteorology agency has also forecast large temperature drops in parts of the country and issued a blue alert for a cold spell on Monday — the lowest level in a four-tier warning system.
In Mohe, China’s northernmost city, temperatures dropped to minus 53 degrees Celsius (minus 63.4 degrees Fahrenheit) on Sunday – the coldest temperatures on record, weather forecasters said. Ice fog – a weather phenomenon that only occurs in extreme cold when water droplets remain in liquid form in the air – is also expected in the city this week, local authorities said.
Yeh Sang-wook, a climate professor at Hanyang University in Seoul, attributed the extreme cold snap on the Korean Peninsula to Arctic winds blowing from Siberia, adding that more snow in South Korea this year is due to melting Arctic ice caps due to warming be climate.
“Last year and this year there was a record meltdown,” he said. “As the sea ice melts, the sea opens up, throwing more steam into the air, resulting in more snow in the north.”
As climate change worsens, the region will face more severe cold weather in the future, he said.
“There is no other (explanation),” he said. “Climate change is indeed deepening, and there is a consensus among global scientists that this type of cold phenomenon will get worse in the future.”
Kevin Trenberth of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) agreed that “extreme weather events are the new norm,” adding, “We can certainly expect extreme weather events to be worse than before.”
He also pointed to the El Niño and La Niña climate pattern cycles in the Pacific Ocean, which affect weather around the world.
La Niña, which normally has a cooling effect on global temperatures, is one of the reasons for the current cold spell, he said.
“Certainly, the weather is subject to large natural fluctuations, but … we often hear about the El Niño phenomenon and right now we are in the La Niña phase. And that certainly influences the kind of patterns that tend to appear. And that’s a player, too,” he said.