Adaptation10: Extreme Cold, Snow & Ice

🏬 WEBINAR — Closing the Climate Adaptation Gap: How AI Can Connect Cities, Investors, and Innovators

Join the Cornell Tech Urban Tech Hub, in partnership with Climate Proof, for a preview of Resilience Scanner, a new platform documenting how cities worldwide are using technology to adapt to climate change. This webinar will bring in climate adaptation investors, scholars, and practitioners to explore how AI-powered deep research can help close this gap and unlock opportunities for faster, more effective urban climate adaptation.

⏰ February 10, 2026, 02:00pm Eastern

Technologies for addressing extreme cold may appear an odd choice for a climate change-related series like Adaptation10.

In a world warmed by human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, extreme cold snaps are becoming less likely, and winters on track to be milder than in the past.

But our overheating planet is reshaping atmospheric dynamics in potentially unexpected ways — contributing to more volatile and violent weather events. For example, some researchers argue that rapid Arctic warming is weakening the temperature differential between the pole and mid-latitudes, making the jet stream less stable and causing cold Arctic air to spill southwards. This shift could help explain some of the extreme cold snaps and intense winter storms of recent years. Moreover, a warmer atmosphere is one able to hold more water, making it capable of unleashing heavier precipitation — including extreme snowfalls.

In short, while scientific consensus is lacking, it is possible that climate change is having an impact on cold weather as well as hot weather.

This context matters — as it suggests that society has to be prepared for stronger, more frequent blizzards like the one that swept across North America last weekend. This storm spread from Canada all the way to Texas and along the East Coast. Temperatures plunged to well below freezing across the continent, and more than one million people lost power at the storm’s peak. Major airlines cancelled more than 11,000 US flights. Energy systems, transport infrastructure, and supply chains all came under strain, and remain fragile as low temperatures and widespread ice persist.

And it’s not only the US suffering from extreme cold, snow, and ice.

Earlier this month, the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia was all but buried under the largest snowfall for 60 years, with huge drifts rising to a height of six stories in some places. Countries in Northern and Central Europe have also had to contend with crippling snowstorms and frigid temperatures, which have led to economic fallout from airport closures, service shutdowns, and transit delays.

What makes extreme cold events so disruptive are the compounding impacts they bring. Below-freezing temperatures, heavy snowfalls, ice formation — these all combine to amplify the effects on infrastructure and human activity. These events can also drag on. Power grids might weather the first snowfall, only to falter later under sustained cold or the strain of accumulating ice.

If climate change is broadening the range of extreme cold impacts, then relying on past experience to guide resilience planning risks underestimating future impacts. Businesses, governments, and individuals need to prepare for worse and adapt accordingly. Historical winter norms may no longer be a reliable baseline.

Hence why this edition of Adaptation10 focuses on innovative solutions to extreme cold risks. The ten companies featured offer new and improved ways to prepare and respond to events like last weekend’s storm, using up-to-the-minute technologies like real-time sensing, hyper-local weather forecasting, embedded heating systems, and roof-load monitoring.

We believe they represent the future of extreme cold adaptation, and a model for other innovators to follow. 

Thanks for reading!

Louie Woodall & Daniel Schmitz-Remberg