For you next argument with the Climate Deniers claiming this winter disproves Global Warming...
How the warming Arctic might be behind Boston's deep freeze
A strange thing happened here in Boston over the weekend: The temperature got above freezing.
The massive dumps of snow here this winter have been bad enough, but it's the cold that's really done us in, an unbroken stretch of frigid weather that’s made Massachusetts feel more like Montreal — or Anchorage.
And Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis has a counterintuitive explanation for all the cold: It's the warming Arctic.
More specifically, Francis thinks the warming Arctic is causing the jet stream to slow down, get a lot more loopy, which lets big masses of frigid air slip south.
The jet stream is that powerful, high-altitude circulation system that carries weather around the Northern Hemisphere. The main fuel behind it is the difference in temperature between the Arctic and the warmer regions to the south.
“When the Arctic is warming so fast, that means there's less fuel driving the jet stream,” Francis says. “When the jet stream has less fuel it flows more slowly, and it tends to take these big north-south dips.”
The northeastern US just happens to be in the path of one of those big dips this year, she says, “and that’s when we get our cold winters." The United Kingdom has also seen extremely strong and persistent storms the past two winters. But she also thinks there’s a lot more going on than just a lot of cold and snow in New — or old — England.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/how-the-warming-arctic-might-be-behind-bostons-deep-freeze/ar-BBhTRFZ
The Arctic is warming causing the dips in the Jetstream and giving us the snow storms and frigid weather.
= new reply since forum marked as read
