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posted by martyb on Sunday May 25 2014, @02:30AM   Printer-friendly

Tim Palmer, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Oxford in the U.K., has published a somewhat controversial Perspective piece in the journal Science. In it, he theorizes that heavy thunderstorms in the western tropical Pacific (due to global warming) this past winter caused changes to the flow pattern of the jet stream, which resulted in the "polar vortex" that chilled the northern part of North America for the first four months of 2014. The winter of 2014 was cold in the U.S., of that there was no doubt. Subzero temperatures became the norm and heating bills skyrocketed. At the time, very few who experienced it were blaming it on global warming, but that may very well have been the cause anyway, Palmer suggests--despite the fact that global temperatures haven't been rising lately.

The abstract (and link to paywalled journal article) can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/803

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Immerman on Sunday May 25 2014, @04:05AM

    by Immerman (3985) on Sunday May 25 2014, @04:05AM (#47250)

    No, a polar vortex is a very specific weather pattern in which large circular wind currents form near the poles, and only in recent years have been able to wander far enough into the mid latitudes to encounter more densely populated regions. Most cold snaps are simply cold air masses drifting around.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25 2014, @06:12AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25 2014, @06:12AM (#47258)

    Isn't there an old theory laying around somewhere that if the polar ice caps sufficiently cleared and warmed that there could be (a( superstorm(s) that launch us into another ice age because vast amounts of heat being pushed into space due to a chimney effect in the eye(s) of the storm(s)? Believe it is one of the theories as to how all those mammoths, cave men, etc all got virtually instantly frozen. Sounds like one heck of a potential polar vortex.

    Know any potentially warm water/air currents that could help fuel such a thing? Probably purely theoretical of course and I am certainly not qualified to properly theorize on it.

    • (Score: 1) by mja on Sunday May 25 2014, @08:25AM

      by mja (1137) on Sunday May 25 2014, @08:25AM (#47263) Journal

      From what I've heard that chimney effect is strong enough to push the entire mammoth into space.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Immerman on Sunday May 25 2014, @03:09PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Sunday May 25 2014, @03:09PM (#47312)

      Sounds bogus to me. What mechanism would transfer the heat into space that quickly? Convection is out, because the air never leaves the Earth. Conduction is out, because there's no material up there to conduct into. That leaves radiation - and while pumping warm air above most the insulating greenhouse gasses would certainly accelerate the rate of radiative heat losses in that air, the amount of air involved would be miniscule, and the rate of heat loss only moderately higher. If the storms covered most of the planet for decades the cumulative effect might eventually become a problem, but that's not very likely.

      As for rapidly freezing things in the Arctic, you don't need any special mechanisms - somebody/thing dies and gets buried in snow during a serious -30* snowstorm and they'll be hard-frozen before you know it - and such weather is hardly rare in the Arctic. If they're wading through deep snowdrifts at the time they might not even fall over.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by tathra on Sunday May 25 2014, @09:07AM

    by tathra (3367) on Sunday May 25 2014, @09:07AM (#47272)

    yup, "polar vortex" is a legitimate planetary phenomenon. the hexagonal polar storms at venus and saturnm, one of which has two centers/eyes; i'm not sure that there are many planets within our own solar system that dont have polar vortexes. in their natural states though, they stay basically confined to the polar regions.

    as as strange and contradictory as it sounds, global warming could cause an ice age. yes, you heard that right. if the melting glaciers from greenland and antarctica deposit too much warm, fresh water too fast into the pacific ocean, it could shut off thermohaline circulation [wikipedia.org], which is what is directly responsible for the temperate tempuratures of europe. without those ocean conveyors bringing warm water north, europe and other northern areas will freeze.

    this is established science fact. iirc, the last time thermohaline circulation got disrupted was when central america came into being, which was directly responsible for the ice age in which we've been for the past ~2-3 million years.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25 2014, @10:50AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25 2014, @10:50AM (#47287)

      the last time thermohaline circulation got disrupted was when central america came into being, which was directly responsible for the ice age in which we've been for the past ~2-3 million years.

      Well, I knew America had been responsible for many of the world's woes for some time, but didn't realise it was quite that long!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25 2014, @03:46PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25 2014, @03:46PM (#47320)

      Ice ages occur in cycles according to the Milankovitch cycles. We are scheduled to enter into another ice age sometime within the next thousand years or so. It has to do with how the position of the earth and average distance from the sun changes throughout the cycle. Go look it up.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by dry on Sunday May 25 2014, @06:54PM

        by dry (223) on Sunday May 25 2014, @06:54PM (#47341) Journal

        The configuration of the continents is a major driver of climate on geological time scales. As the above poster mentions, the closing of the isthmus of Panama majorly changed ocean currents, same with when S. America and Antarctica separated allowing the Southern Oceans currents to circle the Earth along with the accompanying winds which isolated Antarctica.
        Besides ocean currents, continents can be in configurations that encourage or discourage rainfall with rainfall causing weathering which removes CO2 from the atmosphere and turns it into limestone. Even the depth of the oceans varies over geological time scales which I'd guess could also have a large influence on climate.
        Long term climate is complex with orbital forcing being only a part of it. The thing that all these climate forcers have in common is gradual change. Continents move a couple of inches a year and orbits change gradually.