Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Again: Warmer Arctic Could Produce Routine Colder Winters

The climate change deniers, with their heads buried in the sand snowdrifts, will deny this, too:

A warmer Arctic could permanently affect the pattern of the high-altitude polar jet stream, resulting in longer and colder winters over North America and northern Europe, U.S. scientists say.
Because as you and they know, climate change (extreme floods in England, snow in India, fires in Australia, and drought in California) are just props in professorial grant-writing imaginations.

The subject produced a mocking from WTMJ talker Charlie Sykes six weeks ago - - that warming elsewhere (the Arctic) could actually lead to cooling here - - as "polar vortex" worked its way into the vocabulary - - but one of the experts I'd quoted back then appears to agree with the first story linked above:
Other experts put it this way
As temperatures rise faster in the Arctic than at lower latitudes, this changes large-scale temperature and pressure gradients - which has consequences for northern hemisphere winter weather. 
Professor Charles Greene from Cornell University tells us: 
"Global warming has increased the loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, which has altered atmospheric conditions in a manner that stacks the deck in favor of more severe winter outbreaks". 
The pressure change alters atmospheric circulations, including the jet stream - a stream of fast-flowing air in the atmosphere. It also makes the jet stream's path meander more, which allows cold Arctic air to reach further south, affecting the climate in the mid-latitudes.

1 comment:

Grumpus said...

Hey, Jim - check out this rebuttal to your position. Try to stay objective:


http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371639/myth-settled-science-charles-krauthammer