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AS TUNDRA-LIKE temperatures and wind chills as cold as 70 below zero fan out across the United States, everyone is blaming the “polar vortex”.
Polar vortexes, though, are nothing new. They occur seasonally at the North Pole, and their formation resembles that of hurricanes in more tropical regions: fast-moving winds build up around a calm center.
Unlike a hurricane, these are freezing polar winds, circling the Arctic at more than 100 miles per hour. The spinning winds typically trap this cold air in the Arctic.
Splits apart
The the problem comes when the polar vortex weakens or splits apart, essentially flinging these cold wind patterns out of the Arctic and into lower latitudes.
NOAA scientists have suggested that warming temperatures in the Arctic may be responsible for the weakening of the polar vortex. When the vortex weakens, it’s more likely to break apart and become a factor in our winter weather.
A 2009 vortex breakdown drove temperatures in parts of the Midwest down to -22F. Here’s a NASA illustration of the polar vortex (left) and it splitting in two (right):
Click here to view a larger version. (Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory)
It won’t just feel like Arctic temperatures in parts of the United States this week — the weather system is actually Arctic air invading from the north.
Of course, the idea that the polar vortex is responsible for the current cold snap is a strong theory, not a fact. As NOAA notes: “Many factors, including random chaos in the development of weather patterns, can produce such extreme winter events.”
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Ah lads, can we not have a universal temperature scale?? Up the Celsius!!
We do. It’s called Kelvin.
Hardly universal if it is used by absolutely no-one is it?
Meteorologists tend not to be found in chemistry labs.
It is the SI temperature scale. It is used in many industries, schools, colleges and labs worldwide.
It is not used at all by anyone anywhere in the world to refer to weather temperatures.
As a chemist myself I have learned to accept this. It’s time for you to move on also. Celsius is grand.
I’m surprised that as a chemist you don’t use it.
It is widely used in physics and particularly astrophysics.
I get 40 Kelvins to the hogs head.
Is it widely used on the street Darth?
No.
End of
Give me Celsius or give me death!
Wha dah ?
Sheeesh…enough already! It’s Canada, the Northern US and New England. You know what happens here in the winter? It gets cold! Sometimes VERY cold! Nothing new…nothing we haven’t seen before. Some winters we have to shovel out from under 30-40 inch snowstorms, some winters we might not see 40 inches of snow for an entire season! Again, it’s winter, nothing new, nothing we haven’t seen before, nothing we can’t deal with. Please make the alarmists go away!
Oh, and thoughts and prayers for the homeless. All of our communities make a concerted effort in these conditions to find the homeless and bring them in to shelters. We also open up our schools and public buildings for the purpose if needed. Kudos to the police, fire and EMT personnel for specifically going out to locate and bring these people in…
Was Sandy Routine too . If so why did we get so many articles linking Sandy To GW – sorry climate change . Will we learn the lessons of Sandy etc etc etc etc – on and on it went .
Also this storm[s ]] are not like the normal cold spells in NE USA – these are record low temps
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25609411
Ahhh…the BBC…the best place to get the news from the US!?!? These temps are record…or near record lows, yes. But this Arctic Blast is very similar to the Arctic Blasts we get every year! Because this one is a degree colder than the last one, or the one 10 years ago doesn’t mean we don’t see this type of activity routinely…we do…we’re used to it…we know how to deal with it! Again, it’s winter, it gets cold!
…and yes, Sandy was routine! Every 30 years or so the hurricane cycle changes a bit and we see them hit the Northeast instead of the Carolinas…or Florida…or the Gulf Coast…
Katrina was also routine in that it was a Cat-4 when it hit land. We’ve seen many Cat-4 hurricanes in the past….and a few Cat-5s. Where Katrina was different was in that the backside of the storm hit a city that was built below sea level…and a flood levee broke…
Jim Corr spotted.
Fear is control and distraction. Weather,terrorism, immigrants and all the other made up crap. Stops us concentrating on the stuff that really matters.
Jim, I live in Vermont and I’m backing Brian on this. This is my 26th winter here and I’ve seen all sorts of weather here.
It’s a bipolar vortex.
Please quote thermometer temperatures, not wind chill temperature. While the latter may give an indication of what it feels like, there are numeraous ways of calculating them and the subjective estimate of coldness involves many factors (temperature, wind speed, humidity, sunshine etc.). Also, the standard scale for temperature here and across most of the globe is Degrees Celsius – why just cut and paste the US Fahrenheit values when they can be converted using primary schol maths?
Chill out man
Cool down gent!
Primary schol maths? You weren’t in the day they taught primary school spelling?
Sorry – keyboard problem – I have to hit the “o”!
School
:)
hummm – just to point out that temperature is a measure of heat (or the movement of molecules) that occurs above absolute zero …. 3:)
Way too many big words there Tom…you lost me completely!
Thought the plural would be vortices.yawn!!!!!
Both are acceptable
What would the rebels call it?
Vortexes bhoy
Did we not get a blast of it after it finished with the U.S. the last time
Before they Yanks know it, snow camo’ed Canadian Troops will have taken over their cities.
Pffft Canada is -45 and colder with the wind. Grow a pair America!
Chicago is -51 so you grow a pair Canada
Fight fight fight!!!!!!!!!!!
Hows your Polar Vortex ?
Chilly on the willy.
Cold on the hole
Put your hand on me diddy,
And we’ll go for a stroll
Breezy on the vajeezie
Freezin’ on the geezin’
Me thinks it’s time to get my willy warmer out.
Ship Trapped in Antarctica = global warming.
Cold winter in the US = global warming.
Hmmm……
The
If you read up on why you will understand!
Global weather systems are very complex. Climatologists are not saying it is definite that global warming is responsible for all of the extreme weather events in recent times, but each is being looked at on its own evidence, and there is some evidence that warmer air in the Arctic is disrupting the jet streams that affect weather in the northern hemisphere, and channelling unusual weather to certain areas. You could at least look at their scientific papers before commenting – they are not making it up you know!!!
Antarctica was never predicted to warm in the way that the Arctic has warmed. The Arctic has amplified warming because of its position.
You can find a lot of charts about warming and ice melt in polar regions on these websites:
NASA http://climate.nasa.gov/news/986
National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)
and NOAA http://www.noaa.gov/
Somebody call Denis Quaid.
If he is unavailable, call Randy Quaid!
Dont believe it folks. It’s a false flag operation carried out by the cia
*fleg
Joke away..hope you never experience this, it’s horrible and dangerous..it’s not the snow it’s artic temps.
Lighting up we’ve taken so much shite in Ireland we HAVE to joke. Gets me by anyway
Was just waiting to see the ‘global warming’ shtick here, and hey presto there it is. Meanwhile , colleagues of these noaa ‘scientists’ on an antarctic trip to investigate the all but evaporated antarctic icecap find their ship completely frozen in by the hale and hearty spreading ice down there.. Global warming, the flying spaghetti monster of our times..
@Adrian
Please don’t comment on global warming if you don’t understand how it works.
You are flying in the face of scientific evidence when you rubbish the fact of global warming, and not offering any of your own!
The Antarctic was never predicted by climatologists to lose ice; the Arctic was and indeed it has had dramatic ice loss in recent decades!!!
I am constantly amazed by the people who describe global warming as rubbish when there is now so much hard scientific evidence! Thousands of scientists with more knowledge than us, from all of the earth disciplines, are all working together across the globe making observations, doing studies, trying to work out what is going on. They have some very definite conclusions with hard evidence (one is that global warming is definitely happening, and that the recent dramatic warming is largely due to human influences), and their are other areas that they are gathering evidence on and trying to figure out what is going on (for example local weather – for example basic science tells us that warm air holds more moisture, so there would be an expectation that this would lead to heavier precipitation in some areas – as either rain or snow). They are always totally upfront about their level of certainty with any of the statements and predictions they produce.
Climate change denial memes always focus on the uncertainties that are part of the science, and never on that which is proven with peer-reviewed evidence.
The Arctic has warmed dramatically and there is evidence emerging that this warm air is disrupting the jet streams that affect weather in the northern hemisphere. Why is that so very hard to believe as a possibility? I guess if you are a professor of climatology and have been studying climate in the field for decades, or one of the agencies like NASA that has been recording sea ice loss by satellite, you will have a better idea of what might be going on than commentators on an online newspaper!
I would much prefer people to actually engage with the huge amount of scientific evidence, gathered from thousands of highly reputable experts from universities around the whole world in all of the earth scientists, and say if you have any evidence to rebut their conclusions. As things now stand, all of the experts, all of the universities, all of the national and international scientific institutions of the world have a consensus view that global warming is happening and it is largely manmade, and that it is a cause for grave concern.
It is beyond belief that all those thousands of reputable people, universities and institutions are in a huge global conspiracy to fake all of their evidence and lie to the public!!!
Forgive me if I look to them for scientific evidence rather than some of the people who post on here or the misinformation that is spread around by oil-funded anti-AGW campaigns.
The Day After Tomorrow !
Wednesday
Our first Christmas in Nj and currently -2 Celsius but feels -10 last Christmas it was -6 c easy in Dublin… Everything here is called storms.. rain storms and snowstorms I was surprised :-) to us it’s a bit of heavy rain and some snowfall.. Saying that once to adjust to 40 c heat in summer you feel the cold more!
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