It’s not even mid-November and already multiple towns in North America are witnessing icy cold weather. It has already snowed in Texas as well as Tennessee.
According to some scientists the frequency as well as the intensity of these cold snaps will only increase over the time as the planet warms. The statement might seem counterintuitive but its true.
The topic is a little controversial among the atmospheric science community, but some scientists believe that there is a connection between a warmer planet and cold blasts of weather like the one North America is experiencing right now.
Scientists connect this Arctic outbreak to the behavior of the jet stream and the polar vortex. And those, in turn, are affected by a changing climate like by the intense warming in the high Arctic.
In North America, many of the weather patterns that sweep across the continent are controlled by the jet streams, or simply streams of air that flows from West to East.
This week’s cold snap comes just after the end of a historically hot year. July was the hottest month ever recorded on the planet. Going by the data, the Earth has now experienced almost 35 years in a row w above-average temperature.
Moreover, some parts of the planet are warming more quickly than others. One of these regions is the ‘The Arctic’, which is heating up two to three times faster than the rest of the planet.
Image Credits – The New York Times
Any information taken from here should be credited to Skymet Weather
