From NASA Goddard: Desperately cold weather is now gripping the Midwest and Northern Plains of the United States, as well as interior Canada. The culprit is a familiar one: the polar vortex.
A large area of low pressure and extremely cold air usually swirls over the Arctic, with strong counter-clockwise winds that trap the cold around the Pole. But disturbances in the jet stream and the intrusion of warmer mid-latitude air masses can disturb this polar vortex and make it unstable, sending Arctic air south into middle latitudes.
That has been the case in late January 2019. Forecasters are predicting that air temperatures in parts of the continental United States will drop to their lowest levels since at least 1994, with the potential to break all-time record lows for January 30 and 31. With clear skies, steady winds, and snow cover on the ground, as many as 90 million Americans could experience temperatures at or below 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18° Celsius), according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
The map at the top of the page shows air temperatures at 2 meters (around 6.5 feet above the ground) at 09:00 Universal Time (4 a.m. Eastern Standard Time) on January 29, 2019, as represented by the Goddard Earth Observing System Model. GEOS is a global atmospheric model that uses mathematical equations run through a supercomputer to represent physical processes. The animation shows the same model data from January 23-29.
The figures above are not traditional forecasts, but a reanalysis of model input—that is, a representation of atmospheric conditions on those days. Measurements of temperature, moisture, wind speeds and directions, and other conditions are compiled from NASA satellites and other sources, and then added to the model to closely simulate observed reality. Note how some portions of the Arctic are close to the freezing point—significantly warmer than usual for the dark of mid-winter—while masses of cooler air plunge toward the interior of North America.
You can almost feel that cold in this natural-color image above, acquired on January 27, 2019, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Cloud streets and lake-effect snow stretch across the scene, as frigid Arctic winds blew over the Great Lakes.
NWS meteorologists predicted that steady northwest winds (10 to 20 miles per hour) were likely to add to the misery, causing dangerous wind chills below -40°F (-40°C) in portions of 12 states. A wind chill of -20°F can cause frostbite in as little as 30 minutes, according to the weather service.
Meteorologists at The Washington Post pointed out that temperatures on January 31, 2019, in the Midwestern U.S. will be likely colder than those on the North Slope of Alaska.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using GEOS-5 data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC and MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Michael Carlowicz.
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” But disturbances in the jet stream and the intrusion of warmer mid-latitude air masses can disturb this polar vortex and make it unstable,”
And why is it not an excess of very cold air that makes the jet stream unstable? Cold air is much ‘heavier’ so would like a glacier (or like a pyroclastic cloud) flood the less dense areas.
Robert Palmer – Some like it hot
https://youtu.be/A7cOwMxis5c
The animation shows that when the Earth is at its coolest moment, Eurasia, the Arctic and North America start to behave as ONE system.
Atmospheric behavior must be quite different when glacial times near. Resulting in an overall cooling pattern for the Earth as a whole. The lack of our main greenhouse gas water vapor will play an important – if not decisive role – in the cooling of the Earth.
The change in atmospheric behavior has to be added to the diminishing insolation as obliquity diminishes summer warming over the Northern Hemisphere. Cooling oceans also will play their role.
You may well be right – but if you compare the still graphic at the header post with the graphic of the Laurentide Ice Sheet for example…
They have a startling similarity.
Indeed, the similarity is well visible. But what struck me most is that the more normal atmospheric ’round trip around the Arctic’ changed to a more extended ‘two-way road’ between Eurasia and North America. Also for a longer period (ten days): see https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/fcst/#gfs.arc-lea.t2 (use the slide).
It appears that fires are due to climate change and cold snaps to vortexes.
The current temperature (C) in the northeast of the US.
Here in Northern Virginia (Manassas), it is 6:22 am, and 7 F (-13.9 C). It’s the coldest I can recall in this neck of the woods in all of my experience here.
Current temperature anomalies (C) in North America.
Reason for Polar Vortex Split = Climatechange
Reason for Pole Walk = Climatechange
Whats about Pole Shift, climatechage too ?
Source, translation by google-translate
PS a further link:
What drives 20th century polar motion?
We have a minimum solar activity and no El Niño.
It’s to read in context with my comment here
Arctic mass drops south, warm air from the south takes it’s place in the long winter night…radiates heat into deep space…looks like a big heat pump to me…if this cycle repeats often enough…we’ll be back to snowball earth…the solar minimum theory may hold water.
This is not unusual. I’ve seen and lived through this before. Every so many years we get these extreme low temperatures for a few days in the middle of winter…. 2014… 2009…. 1994…1991… before this, I didn’t keep track.
It’s too bad for the pro climate change people that a couple degree rise in the average earths temperature is not climate changing.
Here in the upper mid-west, we live through a temperature swing of well over 100° every 6 months and those darn mosquito’s just won’t die. What is 2°? Nothing. That is NOT climate changing. It’s the same ole spring, summer, fall and winter as always.
The “polar vortex” appellation denotes that something is different about North American winter weather, presumably caused by ‘climate change’ (whatever that means). There isn’t. Polar air masses moving south in winter has been happening my entire life (70 years).
Michael Kelly, I saw -10 F in Chesterfield County VA in mid-80s. January 1977 it didn’t get above freezing for the entire month.
Emperor’s new clothes … the art of making nothing look like something.
I think this is just the system working as it does. The arctic is taking a big bite out of the warmer air in mid Lars, moving it to the pole where the heat will rapidly dissipate into space.
Wonder what the energy emission spectrum out to space is looking like right about now.
Exactly. Without these excursions of cold air south and warm air north, the artic would get colder and colder with no sun in winter. This “polar vortex” is just the natural, but somewhat intermittent, movement of heat from equator to poles. Not be, and not a global warming issue.
Warmist narrative: Cold weather in the winter is a recent phenomenon and can only be explained by the polar vortex and global warming.
The scientists that claim this particular event is linked to global warming are either witch doctors or more likely “Cargo Cult Scientists” (See Feynman). This event is what was called in the 50’s and 60’s a “Cold Snap”. Now that we have satellite imagery and billions of dollars for global warming research, some so called scientists, are correlating every weather event cause to be global warming or climate change. Cargo Cult journalists then spread the word.
CBC’s Mortillaro and Wagstaffe are using the same image for their propaganda:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-change-polar-vortex-1.4998820
Yet the polar vortex cold air… is
So according to these two geniuses, the warm polar air is getting colder as it gets southward…
The rest:
is beyond as demonstrated by checking this site http://squall.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html where we can see that the jets are meandering more in boreal winter despite being faster than their austral counterparts.
These two would be well inspired to read https://hacenearezkifr.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/leroux-1993c.pdf
The CBC is a disgrace.
Notwithstanding that we should ask these two luminaries how they think weather linked to the onset of a glaciation looks like…
These is a Dr. Indrani Roy and there ist further professor Mike Lockwood finding natural reasons for these phenomena, existing longer than human industries 😀
Sorry, link error for Dr. Indrani Roy
So, we finally have a very simple explanation for why Earth experiences glacial and interglacial periods. Clearly, the polar vortex has been shown capable of bringing freezing cold as far south as the extent of glaciers (thousands of feet of solid ice) in North America during the last glacial period of the current Ice Age.
There obviously must be a “trigger mechanism” (still working to explain that, wink) that causes the “polar vortex instabilities” to be sustained for tens of thousands of years.
This theory overrides the problematic explanation that glacial/interglacial intervals are caused by the direct variations of solar insolation on the Earth associated with Milankovitch cycles.
Thank you, NASA 🙂
Anyone know how many of the IPCC’s 30-plus, multimillion dollar supercomputer climate models have actually modeled the polar vortex and the related “forcings” that trigger its instabilities?
I think I know the answer, but just asking for evidence to the contrary.
Just a theory, but maybe the cold weather in the northern hemisphere right now is due to WINTER?
Nonsense. Next you’ll try saying that the warm weather we are having here in Australia is due to Summer.
Get the message. It’s all due to Man Made CO2.
We’re doomed.
Even the Canadians.
In NE Minnesota (from whence I hail) this is not “abnormal” or “unprecedented” territory, it is winter, it is a given that it will be cold, and that it is. However, despite the ballyhoo, and frothing and gnashing of the forecasters (both local, and national) we failed to hit either of the “magic numbers” that they predicted we most likely would.
Magic number 1- -40 degrees (the point at which the C and F scales briefly meet. Some areas of the state did reach this number last night, but those were the areas expected to reach magic number 2 listed below…
Magic number 2- -60 F the record cold temperature for the state.
So, all in all, this is pretty much like the cold snap we got last year, and the year before that, etc…
It is WINTER what do you expect in a cold climate? This is not that much of a rarity here.
Where next for the reality lessons?—the UK and Paris I hope.
Notice how they have shaded the oceans darker red around the edge of the image to make the Earth look spherical. That’s up to 40°C on the temperature scale.