Cold extremes enduring in a much warmer world

Cold extremes are expected to warm under anthropogenic climate change, yet they may continue to affect societies and ecosystems adapted to warmer mean conditions. We quantify how winter temperature distributions across the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes change under stronger radiative forcing, with particular emphasis on changes in the cold tail. Using equilibrium simulations from LongRunMIP and transient large-ensemble experiments, we show that strong warming reduces winter temperature variability asymmetrically. As a result, the cold tail shrinks less than the warm tail, and cold extremes warm more slowly than the distribution core and hot extremes. Consequently, cold events remain relatively more pronounced with respect to the mean climate state despite substantial warming. Qualitatively similar responses in transient and near-equilibrium simulations indicate that common physical mechanisms govern distributional changes across timescales.