The water pump of the furnace providing heat to the old house I live in has been failing lately. I live on the first floor, and there are tenents on the second and third floors. It's been a fiasco, and today the furnace people are going to install a new pump, which takes eight hours. During the time they will make the repair, the temperature outside will fall from 22°F (my back porch thermometer now) to 3°. The wind chill ("real feel") will fall from 9° to -21°. That's minus 21 degrees. From there it will continue to get colder. By 11 o'clock tonight, the actual temperature will be -5° and the "real feel" will be -32°.
Such temperatures will be quite generalized over large parts of the midwest and the northeast.
Meteorologist Eric Holthaus posted video of him turning boiling water into snow. Shot in Viroqua, WI, near La Crosse, where it was -21°F with a wind chill of -51°F.
In a rare escape from the Crisis du Jour, I was at my local wateringhole last night explaining to a friend (also a writer on the internet) that the meandering jet stream was the proximate cause of this forthcoming extreme weather event.
A meandering polar jet stream opens the deep-freezer door and pours frigid polar air onto the U.S. during the first week of January 2014 — Source
The video below explains how the decreasing temperature differential between the Arctic and mid-latitudes has destabilized the jet stream, thus causing (for example) record cold snaps like the one we're having. This is a result of anthropogenic climate change, which has led to dramatic warming in the Arctic.
The video features (among others) Rutgers University's Jennifer Francis and Weather Underground's Jeff Masters, who try once again to explain what's going on to the billions of big-brained bipedal primates making a Big Mess on this planet. Francis explains what is probably going on right now—
Arctic warming, she said, is causing less drastic changes in temperatures between northern and southern climates, leading to weakened west-to-east winds, and ultimately, a wavier jet stream.
The stream’s recent “waviness” has been taking coldness down to the temperate United States and leaving Alaska and the Arctic relatively warm, Francis said. The same thing has been happening in other countries as well. Winter storms have been pounding the U.K., she noted, while Scandinavia is having a very warm winter.
I should note that not all interested scientists support Francis' hypothesis explaining why the jet stream has gone crazy in recent years. Climate scientist Kevin Trenberth (NCAR, Boulder) disputes her view. I should also mention that IMHO Kevin is wrong about this one. Nor does he have an alternative hypothesis beyond hand-waving.
And here's what I've got to say to anybody who thinks global warming isn't human-caused, or it's a hoax, or says (sarcastically) "it's so cold outside, where's the global warming? (ha, ha)", etc.—
Eat Me
And now, the video.
The average denier can't articulate the difference between 'climate' and 'weather'.
The more clever deniers will spout off about solar cycles, oscillations in the ionosphere or other such off point talking points.
I always like to end such amusing conversations with a recitation of the classic Robert Frost poem Fire & Ice.
Posted by: Mike | 01/06/2014 at 11:54 AM