Like the title says, I know that global warming does produce colder winters but I’m unable to explain how.
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It doesn’t – not on the whole anyway. On average winters on planet Earth are getting warmer. That’s what the global climate is doing.
However, even as winters on average across the globe are getting warmer, it is possible that some winters in some places, or even the average winter in a given place, are getting colder. See, weather, and weather patterns, are complicated. How warm or how cold it is in a given place is strongly influenced by currents in the ocean and in the atmosphere. If you get a lot of air blowing in from the North Pole, that air brings cold with it. Whereas, if you’re getting a lot of air blowing in from tropical regions, that air will be warmer.
Global warming can change the way that air and sea currents across the globe tend to flow. For instance, one possibility that has been speculated about is that the Gulf stream could be affected. This is an ocean current that, amongst other things, carries warm water from the Gulf of Mexico towards northwestern Europe, which is why countries there (like France, Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, etc.) have warmer climates (and especially milder winters) than you’d “expect” from their latitude. For instance, Amsterdam is at about the same latitude as Calgary, Canada, but while the latter sees average temperatures of -7°C in January, Amsterdam averages above 3°C. If, as a result of global warming, the Gulf Stream no longer reached northwestern Europe, winters here would get a lot colder.
These kinds of effects are why the term “global warming” has been largely replaced by the term “climate change”, to emphasize that even though global average temperatures are rising, local effects can be more complicated than that.
The recent extreme cold in the US was caused by air blowing in from the North Pole, in a phenomenon called a “polar vortex”. It is possible that climate change will make such polar vortices happen more often. However, even in the US, winters on average have been [getting warmer](https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/winter-weather-and-climate-crisis-explained).
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