Photo: “Winter Wonderland” by Clinton W via flickr.
Brrrr. If you haven’t noticed yet, it’s cold outside. Freezing temperatures and chilling winds have been hitting areas of North America, Europe and Asia. Even as far south as Florida, the temperature has been far from usual, with Melbourne, Florida, experiencing a record low of 28 degrees Fahrenheit, or about -2 degrees Celsius, leaving the state anxiously hoping for the survival of its orange crop.
Many of us have seen the satellite image of snow-clad Britain, covered in the white stuff from head to toe. In fact, Europe has been walloped by record breaking snowstorms. Norway’s deep freeze is reportedly too much for their buses to handle, with engine oil freezing up. For Ireland, last month was the coldest December in almost 30 years, with cold weather payments being doled out to help those on low-income pay for heating bills.
With so much talk about trying to keep the planet’s temperature from rising 2 degrees, skeptics and believers alike are scratching their heads. Has global warming evolved into global cooling?
Apparently, a sound, scientific explanation is available. Termed Arctic oscillation, experts of atmospheric science explain that opposing atmospheric pressure patterns located at the top of the planet shift back and forth from time to time, thus affecting the weather across much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Currently, a mass of high pressure is sitting over Greenland, deflecting cold air from the jet stream farther south than in ‘normal’ years. The high-pressure pattern is more pronounced this year, and, along with help from a big area of low pressure at the mid-latitudes, it’s causing more extremes in weather. When these areas of differing pressures remain stationary, scientists term it a negative phase of oscillation. In the past few decades, lower-than-average pressure patterns over the Arctic and higher-than-average pressure over the mid-latitudes have allowed the jet stream to blow uninterrupted from west to east, keeping colder temperatures farther north, where many believe they belong.
Even the experts do not fully understand what causes these vacillations in air pressure. But they do know that they are not new. In decades past, extreme cold temperatures have affected areas in the southern U.S.
And the term ‘global’ wouldn’t be correct in defining this current cool trend. While some areas in the Northern Hemisphere have been affected, the North Pole, by its standards, has seen a very warm winter. Dr. Walter Meier from the Boulder, Colorado, National Snow and Ice Data Center states, “Pretty much all of the Arctic is above normal,” even by as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit, in fact.
So, while scientists continue to study the ins and outs of earth’s climate, and while skeptics continue to decry ‘global warming’, the rest of us can pull out the skis and toboggans and enjoy winter while it lasts.
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The common accepted vernacular for “global warming” is actually now “climate change”. You will expect to see greater extremes in the future and that includes frigid temperatures.