polar vortex takes a walkabout
Image from Jan 6, 2014 -- Fairfax Climate Watch, Expect More Frequent Extreme Cold (and Hot) Weather by Matt Owens
If you want to understand why it's so damned, bitter cold right now, or depending where you are, so damn warm, there is an excellent article at Daily Kos right now: Polar Vortex, Jet Streams, Stratospheric Warming events, Rossby Waves, and Arctic Blasts.
Author Jamess does a very good job at explaining the pretty complicated physics of sudden stratospheric warming and how atmospheric high pressure systems block the jet stream. One of my favorite things Jamess quotes is from an article from Climate Central: Arctic Outbreak: When the North Pole Came to Ohio
by Andrew Freedman, -- Jan 2, 2014
"The atmospheric blocking is forcing a section of the polar vortex to break off and move south, into the U.S. The polar vortex is an area of cold low pressure that typically circulates around the Arctic during the winter, spreading tentacles of cold southward into Europe, Asia, and North America at times. Except this time, it’s not a small section of the vortex, but what one forecaster, Ryan Maue of WeatherBELL Analytics, called “more like the whole enchilada” in a Twitter conversation on Thursday."
If you do a cursory google on sudden stratospheric warming, you'll read right up front that it's a common phenomenon that happens every two or three years. Except that we had one at pretty much exactly this time last year. And the year before that. And, golly, there were intense SSWs in in January of 2008, 2009 and 2010, and a mild SSW in 2011.
One commenter said, "Its as if the world's climate is convulsing."
I really would love it if everyone in the world would read this article because, damn, it's cold out there! I guess that climate change stuff really is a bunch of nonsense!
If you really can't stand to read it, here's the last paragraph -- emphasis is the authors' --
"If only those record-melting Arctic ice packs would stay in place and not keep warming up their supposed-to-be Arctic neighborhoods by exposing all that open sea water -- then maybe that Arctic Vortex might not have to 'go wobbling around like a wildly spinning top -- losing its fast-track momentum' ... at such an ever increasing rate.
But then again, Who needs stable Jet Streams anyways?
Certainly not farmers, not foresters, not ranchers; Certainly not suburban folks who hate all these crazy arctic deep freezes ... the ones who ask, "Why in the world, is it so damn cold, anyways?"
Now hopefully, you can tell them."