The country
is freezing in an unprecedented fashion, and global warming is to blame. Sound
crazy? The cold snap that North America is experiencing east of the rocky
mountains, with temperatures at Arctic-like levels, is real, but it's only part
of the story. Simultaneously, there are record warm temperatures happening in
other parts of the world, from Australia to the actual Arctic.
While a
small but vocal minority of people might use the faulty logic of, "it's
cold where I am, therefore global warming isn't real," even schoolchildren
know that weather isn't climate. But these extreme cold snaps have gotten more
severe in recent years, due to a combination of global warming and a phenomenon
you've likely heard of: the polar vortex. Here's the science of how it works,
and why global warming is paradoxically playing a major role in today's
record-low temperatures.
When you
think about the Earth, including its weather, climate, and temperature, what
picture do you get in your head?
The best way
to picture Earth is as a sphere rotating on its axis, but with two additional
effects: the atmosphere and the oceans. As the Earth rotates on its axis, we
experience warming during the day (in direct sunlight) and cooling at night (in
the dark), as the Earth radiates its stored heat away into the depths of space.
When our hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun, we experience summer months;
when our hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun, we experience winter months.
Read more
here.
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