No, I’m not talking about the big rock concert coming in May to
Wisconsin, this is something that we all see and feel as we walk out the door
in the morning. The record setting cold that has gripped the eastern half of
the country since around Christmas has caused the usual ‘hur, hur, where’s
you’re global warming now, huh?’ posts on social media like Twitter, including
from the Twit-In Chief.
I could go on all day about the difference between weather and climate
but sites like RealClimate do a fine job of explaining that but what I want to
talk about is how climate change is making cold snaps like this sink even
further south and stay longer. Simultaneously warm air from the temperate zone
can infiltrate the arctic causing things like rain in Greenland and melting
permafrost in Alaska.
One consequence of climate change that is not in doubt is that the
arctic is warming over 3 times faster than regions closer to the equator. As
this difference becomes less the polar jet stream becomes weaker and allows the
arctic air to invade. There are rivers of air in the atmosphere called jet
streams that carry weather systems around the planet in a fairly regular linear
pattern that keeps them within a certain band of latitude. Recent research from Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers has predicted that these polar invasions will become even more
frequent as the world warms.
We had a similar pattern in 2009, I remember one day in January then
where the temp in New Orleans was the same as Fairbanks, Alaska. Chaos is the
rule of the day in weather now, and with more heat comes more chaos. I have
been studying this for over 25 years and observing it even longer, the
predictions made by Dr. James Hansen before Congress in 1988 are coming to pass.
Things are moving faster now with
bigger disasters becoming more and more common. Also remember that these long
lasting bends in the jet stream work the other way as well and we are going to
see long lasting heatwaves in summer like Europe in 2017.
