Science
Why Is It So Cold? The Polar Vortex, Explained
Photograph by NASA/GSFC/Aqua/MODIS
A massive winter storm on Jan. 2 was followed by very cold temperatures and dangerous wind chills
“Polar vortex” has taken an uncontested lead in the competition for buzzword of 2014. It’s brought Arctic chill to the continental United States, disrupted industries and cities, and most, curiously, turned Donald Trump into a climate realist. Sort of.
After all, global warming is expensive and growing more so. And, as weird as it sounds, global warming can play an indirect role in the occasional deep freeze.
The Arctic is heating faster than the rest of the world, hurried along by the disappearance of polar sea ice. Bright white ice reflects energy back into space; dark blue water absorbs it. Arctic temperatures are about 2 degrees Celsius warmer there than they were in the mid-1960s. (The average temperature increase for the Earth’s atmosphere overall is about 0.7 degree C, since 1900.)
In other words, the temperature difference between the Arctic and North America is shrinking. That’s one factor causing wobbliness in the jet stream, the west-east current that circles the Northern Hemisphere, according to Jennifer Francis, research professor at Rutgers University. Normally, that river of air keeps low-pressure cold air contained above the Arctic and holds higher-pressure warm air above the temperate regions, where most people live.
Scientists tend to call the jet stream a “polar vortex,” Francis says.
A slowing in the jet stream has caused it to zigzag, carrying warmer temperatures farther north than usual—and Arctic cold farther south. “The real story,” Francis says, is that the jet stream is “taking these big swings north and south and that’s causing unusual weather to occur in a number of places around the Northern Hemisphere.”
If New York is too cold, try Fairbanks or St. Petersburg, which have experienced weird highs as 2013 came to a close—or, for snowbirds, Australia, which just concluded its hottest year on record, a smoldering 1.2 degrees C (2.1 degrees Fahrenheit) above average.
“Global warming” is too narrow a term to encompass observed and projected changes to rivers, oceans, forests, cities and weather extremes, and “climate change” includes a much wider variety of events than hotter temperature averages and extremes—increasing rain and snow, increasing droughts and floods, more powerful and frequent tropical storms, reduced cloud cover, and so forth.
Better yet, call it what some geologists are beginning to call it, the Anthropocene, or human epoch, a departure from the Earth’s operating system—the first in almost 12,000 years.
Replies
If you can prove to me that paying a tax (or "credit") to Al Gore or Kenneth Lay (with such a "credit" based on a carbon dioxide theory output via my lifestyle) will save the world, I will pay it.
HOWEVER: if this same carbon dioxide theory for this "credit" is proven to be a scientific scam financed by the same people proposing this tax (as evident by HUGE government and United Nations funding of scientists who were proposing this theory, and proposing it at the same time that Al Gore and his U.N. peers were also proposing this carbon dioxide bullsh!t theory (and now are the laughing stock of their peers)), then you DO NOT have something that is "destroying the earth," especially if all-time record cold temperatures and ice-sheet amounts are present at this time when you claimed five years ago that there will be no polar ice!!!!!!!
FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY—
Al Gore predicted the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely ice free in five years. Gore made the prediction to a German audience in 2008. He told them that “the entire North ‘polarized’ cap will disappear in 5 years.”
“Five Years”
You have a financial scam, plain and simple, via using pseudo-science fear to extract money from people in the name of "saving the planet."
1 word
HAARP
if u dont know its a device that many great world ruling counteas have, a haarp machine can control weather....... D:
thats why sometimes whales end up beaches and stuff because the radiowayves and the electicity affect the biosphere on eaths in a way the instincs and other verry natural things get disordered.....
just searsch HAARP u will get it.
lets hope soon ppl will start to wake up!
Why would the money addicts use HAARP at a time (last December) when they were discussing the need for a carbon credit system, along with Obamacare? Using HAARP to lower temperatures would be shooting themselves in the foot while they are trying to preach the need for saving the Earth due to global warming!!
When the springtime comes, the carbon nazis will be back. I just hope the fluoride-water drinking public remembers how much their heating bills were at this time, as opposed to which quarterback did better in the Super Bowl.
solar flares-people and foriegn govs are making money from the scam like Malcolm says-there is the 'climate change summit' every year at one luxury resort or another and companies trying to cash in with some other related scam-that's tax dollars
Yeah, but it used to be called "global warming." Isn't this somewhat similar to changing the term of "used cars" to "certified vehicles?"
Global warming was invented the same time as the carbon credit tax idea, hence it is politically based and the two DO go together. You brought up my political leanings with "Truly ironic to see someone from Texas denying global warming but then again you're a libertarian...cough!
If you support global warming, you support the carbon credit tax system since both were invented by the same team of fraudsters from both sides of the political spectrum AT THE SAME TIME.
Credibility is in the eyes of the beholder, and not from the declaration of one person.
what a surprise Avatar.............
It is ludicrous (with the U.S. recording the coldest temperatures on record and record amounts of ice being recorded in Antarctica) that there are still people like yourself who actually still defend this idea that populations must pay a tax for high levels of carbon dioxide that supposedly will eventually melt all polar ice and make snow storms a thing of the past, as predicted by well-funded scientists who support this financial scam (including Al Gore, who stated in 2008 that there would be no more polar ice in five years).
Al Gore's "Hockey Stick" is already now proven to be incorrect. Here's the corrected chart; the Mann "Hockey Stick" is the lower one and was proven to be either a lie or calculated incorrectly:
And here's the data used by the global warmists (now called "climate changers") to push the idea that CO2 causes global warming, and thus you must pay a tax for exhaling or staying warm by self-sufficient means:
BUT WAIT: here's a chart of the relationship between the Earth's temperature and Ocean Oscillations (which are proven to have an effect on world temperature):
Carbon dioxide is not a poison. It is used by plants for growth and is measured by the brain to determine breathing rates. Recorded periods in history that were high in carbon dioxide featured lush plant growth AND snow storms and ice at the polar caps.
Global warming (and the carbon credit tax system) is a scam designed by Republican Kenneth Lay of Enron and Democrat Al Gore. My Constitutional Libertarian leanings have nothing to do with this.
there has been huge sunspot activity in the last few weeks that effect the Earths electromagnetic grid and weather
Starfire Tor-Huge Sun Spot 1944
Global warming is a scam, along with the carbon credit tax system, which were both developed at the same time. Thanks for the info.
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