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By: Sierra Pape
By: Sierra Pape
When we picture climate change, we imagine the scorching sun and absurd temperatures in the summer. We imagine the melting of icebergs and northern habitats destroyed. But climate change is actually affecting every aspect of our normal weather patterns creating extreme, record storms.
You may be wondering, “How can global warming be related to cold temperatures.” So, cold air is normally concentrated around the north pole in the polar vortex, a bubble around the Earth’s poles that contains low pressure and cold air. The formation adjusts and shifts if interfered with. Recently, there has been interference from the jet stream. The jet stream is a band of intense winds that sits at a lower latitude than the polar vortex. The warming of the Arctic, caused by climate change, has changed the trajectory and position of the jet streams. Energy escaping from the morphed jet streams is hitting the polar vortex and causing massive movement and the escape of the cold air. Where the polar vortex goes, cold air and cold wind go.
The winter of 2021 has done nothing but prove this phenomenon with the numerous flurries in Europe and the incident in Texas about a month ago. A Southern state where snow is a rarity was completely blown out with negative temperatures, hail, and up to 6 inches of snow. Their lack of resources and poor electricity setup led to many Texans devastated without electricity and frozen pipes.
The reason that Texas was so under-prepared was that a storm of this volume had never occurred before, and they never predicted one to. This storm could not be fully credited to natural causes! Global warming is causing extremes that we never could’ve imagined, both hot and cold. This is a massive discussion topic with scientists and the study of the movement abilities of the polar vortex is still unknown. But we can see first-hand the impact of global warming from warmer winters to ice-cold storms to record summer days and the extreme fluctuation of our impacted climate.
Sources:
https://overcast.fm/+oIe9_KAck/04:34
https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2021/03/how-did-climate-change-cause-the-texas-snowstorm
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