So, we’re being told that the planet is heating up. Without big changes, the sea levels will rise dramatically, some countries will be too hot to live in and our reliance on air conditioning will be a catch-22. But if the planet is warming, why has the weather been so cold? Across the world, there has been snow, ice and freezing wind – how can this be happening if the world is warming up? Hopefully, this week I’ll be able to make it a bit clearer.
First of all, climate and weather are not the same thing. As I explained in my heat wave post during the summer, weather changes, including temperature changes, are local, day-to-day fluctuations. Climate is described as ‘the average weather patterns in a region over a long period of time‘. Although we know that climate change is likely to make winters milder and wetter in the UK, this does not mean that cold weather will never happen.
To understand this, we have to understand something called the Polar Vortex. The Polar Vortex is a big swirling ring of cold air and low pressure which wraps around both of Earth’s poles. It keeps cold air trapped in the north. As the Polar Vortex gets weaker (due to climate change), it wobbles, which means that it can move south, which can affect Europe, North America and Asia, as it is now. It can also ‘elongate, stretch into different shapes and even split’. The Polar Vortex has been weakened a lot in the past 30 (ish) years due to loss of glaciers and sea ice because of extreme warming, and therefore has changed shape a few times. So, this is an example of where local changes in the Earth’s poles have global repercussions.
For the UK, we also have to understand the Atlantic jet stream. The jet stream is a ribbon of strong winds which can cause changes in wind and pressure, which helps to shape the weather. Low pressure can bring storms, and high pressure can bring dry skies. The Polar Vortex has a bearing on the jet stream – if the Polar Vortex weakens, the jet stream also weakens, and if it strengthens, the jet stream generally strengthens. A stronger jet stream can bring us stormy and wet weather, whereas a weak jet stream can bring very cold air from the Arctic and Europe in the winter.
So, how does this affect us? As we’ve seen with places around the world (most recently, Texas), this extreme weather can disrupt travel and hospitals, affect power and water supplies, cause flooding and even cause deaths. Sadly, some of the changes we’ve seen related to temperature and weather may be irriversible – the thing is, we don’t really know. The good thing is, this is an area of great developing research, and we’re learning more about it every day. These individual problems are all linked to our biggest problem of all – climate change. So, we must make big changes, quickly.
I hope that this was helpful – I’ve linked many different websites which should be able to explain these things much better than me. There are also infographics from organisations like Greenpeace on social media that are really helpful and easy to understand. It can be pretty complicated, but if we’re trying to understand it all, then we’re moving one step forward. Thanks for reading!
Waste Makes Waste 