"Polar Vortex" And Climate Change: Are They Related? Well.....It's Complicated

Someone in Chicago lifted this pasta with a fork in this week's
subzero cold and it froze that way. 

The big cold wave that hit the Midwest this past week has faded fast, and there's a brief spell of spring-ish weather coming to much of the nation.

Practically everybody called the cold wave the "polar vortex," but of course as I explained the other day, it was just a piece of the polar vortex way up north breaking off and that helped to send frigid air to the States.

As noted, as cold waves go, this was a powerful, if brief one. There might have been an Illinois state record for lowet temperaeture set, and a few cities like Rockford and Moline, Illinois and Cedar Rapids, Iowa set all-time record low temperatures.

There are a few clowns out there telling the gullible that the cold wave means climate change is a hoax. Ever notice we're told that every time it gets chilly, but whenever there's record heat, they shut their mouths?

You have to keep repeating: A cold wave in one corner of the world does not disprove climate change, and a hot spell in another little corner of the world doesn't prove it exists.

We look at longer term trends and other factors instead. Here's one possible indication:

It's true that a lot of record low temperatures were set in the past week. But if you look at the past 365 days, almost twice as many daily record highs were set as daily record lows. That's a trend, folks.

You might also have heard some news reports that suggest the record cold this week in the Midwest might partly have been actually caused by global warming. An Associated Press article on January 28 was headlined: "Science Says: Get Used to Polar Vortex Outbreaks."

Well, maybe.

I've covered the issue of how cold snaps might be related to climate change, but now's a good time to review.  The polar vortex is a circle of very cold air that meanders around the Arctic. It's usually trapped somewhere up there by jet stream winds.

This cold outbreak was triggered in part by something called a Sudden Stratospheric Warming. The stratosphere is a layer of the atmosphere high above us, around six to 30 miles above ground.

A schematic from the Weather Channel. The Sudden Stratospheric Warming
over the North Pole splits the Polar Vortex into two or more pieces. 

When there is a Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW for short) over the Arctic, it can split up the polar vortex.  Then, pieces of the vortex break off and end up in Siberia, northern Asia,  Europe or southern Canada and the United States.  

There was an SSW earlier this month, which helps explain why this brutal piece of the the polar vortex made places like Minneapolis, Des Moines and Chicago so miserable.

I have to stop here and offer a caveat: The fact is scientists are sure global warming is occurring and it's causing all kinds of problems, notwithstanding what our President Trump says. He claims his own "high level of intelligence" to explain his view that climate scientists are all wrong. 

Whatevs.

However, there is not yet scientific consensus on what I'm about to describe. The pieces of the puzzle seem to be coming together, but what I will offer is NOT proof that this is global warming in action.

Some scientist think that climate change might be making SSW's more common. That means the polar vortex, usually locked up somewhere near the North Pole, will more frequently break apart, sending shards of itself over the places in the mid-latitudes and giving places like Madison, Wisconsin or Burlington, Vermont more frequent wicked bad winter cold spells.

On top of that, the Arctic is warming faster than the midlatitudes and tropics. This reduced temperature contrast could make the jet stream weaker. A weaker jet stream tends to have bigger northward bulges and southward plunges.

Those southward plunges here in the Northern Hemisphere are cold waves. Also, this slower jet stream, and these bigger bulges and plunges might make SSW's more likely, according climate scientist.

At the risk of getting into the technical weeds here, let's allow Robert Fanney, aka Robert Scribbler to explain this:

The slower jet stream "results in the collapse of the column of  upper level air held aloft by the (Polar) Vortex's winds. When the air collapses, it compresses, causing the stratosphere to warm. The falling column of warm air then can end up acting like an atmospheric wedge - driving the Polar Vortex apart and causing it to split."

The end result might be we could now be just entering a future in which it's generally hotter most of the time than it used to. But this general warmth would be punctuated by periods of intense winter cold, like the Midwest experienced in the past week.

This winter could be a glimpse of that scenario. There have been periods of record warmth in parts of the country interspersed with punishing cold snaps.  We always have periods of record warmth and chill, but the contrast between the two extremes might be getting, well, more extreme.

As noted above, not all climate scientists agree with what I've just described. The atmosphere is incredibly complex, and there's so many things going on up there that it's hard to tease out what might be affected by climate change, and to what extent.

Some scientists say climate change is making Sudden Stratospheric Warming events more frequent, while other equally credible scientists say this is hogwash.

That's the thing. The science of climate change is settled, but a lot of the picky details of what it will do are not. Which sows public confusion. Well, if the science is settled, why don't we know what's going to happen.

Think of the current state of climate science as a house under construction. The frame and roof and the walls and such are up, so we know what the shape of the house is going to be. Like climate science, the basics of the house are established.

The house isn't done, though. We don't know what color it's going to be, how they will furnish the interior rooms or what the landscaping will look like.  Like the work of climate scientists, the picky details of what the house will become are still uncertain.

It's possible the departing cold snap in the Midwest is just another normal aspect of what we fondly or not-so-fondly call "winter." Besides, as I said at the start of this post, one weather event on one spot of the globe does pretty much nothing to prove or disprove climate change. You have to look at long term trends all over the Earth.

I know damn well I will get blowback from the climate change deniers and skeptics for this piece, as I always do when I say something factual like "climate change exists."

I'm always stunned by the vehemence of some of these deniers. Maybe they doth protest too much?