We are happy to be back after a long holiday season, and we will begin covering some of the interesting recent developments. To all of you who have expressed the desire to be interviewed on a short podcast that will be stored on the website for all of our readers, we are ready to go and I will be contacting you. Thanks so much.
But first – what’s with this cold, freezing, snowy, icy weather? In some places in North Dakota, the temperature reached as low as 70 degrees below zero with windchill! Polar vortexes are pushing their way south from the Arctic. Isn’t climate change and global warming supposed to be all about the higher temperatures around the world? Climate change deniers are feasting on these winter developments as confirmation that global warming is a total fiction. So, what gives?
Well, simply stated, this Artic vortex phenomenon is happening a lot more often. Many scientists are convinced that the faster warming of the Arctic is destabilizing the jet stream. The Arctic is warming 4 times faster than the rest of the earth. The jet stream is something we’ve heard about all our lives if we watch the weather reports. The jet stream is a fast-moving, high-altitude current of air, encircling the Artic and acting as a barrier to hold back and prevent these frigid Arctic temperatures from moving too far south into the United States. But when the jet stream weakens, cold Siberian air can break out and disrupt our normal weather patterns.
“When the Arctic is off-the-charts warm, we’re more likely to see frigid cold invade places like Texas that are ill-equipped to deal with it,” Jennifer Francis, a Woodwell Research Center climate scientist and a top researcher on the Arctic, told the Associated Press this week. “Rapid Arctic warming is one of the clearest symptoms of human-caused climate change, making winter extremes more likely even as the globe warms overall.”
References:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24022023/how-climate-change-and-the-polar-vortex-influenced-this-weeks-harsh-winter-storms/
https://mailchi.mp/insideclimatenews/another-frigid-week-for-texas?e=276ce8f50f
Photo by Walls.io : https://www.pexels.com/photo/glass-of-champagne-and-christmas-balls-19387254/
