This is causing the jet stream to meander more, which can trigger more extreme bouts of weather-from cold fronts to drought. The polar regions are warming quicker than the rest of the planet, making the difference in temperatures less extreme. Scientists are now studying how climate change is disrupting the jet stream. Every now and then though, there’s a wobble in the North Pole vortex-most commonly during the winter in the Northern Hemisphere-which causes the winds to break into the lower atmosphere, sending frigid temperatures south, sometimes as far as Florida. Typically, these strong, icy-cold wind currents are locked high up in the stratosphere by the jet stream-a permanent west-to-east current of wind that encircles the Earth. So what is it? The polar vortex is an area of low air pressure that constantly swirls around the north and south poles. More recently though, for many people, a record-breaking cold January in 2014-when temperatures in New York City dropped to just 4☏-was likely the first time they’d heard of it. According to NOAA, it’s thought the term first appeared in an 1853 edition of the magazine Living Age. The polar vortex is not a new phenomenon. One big question being studied at the moment is to what extent a warmer Arctic is disrupting weather patterns at lower latitudes. But because winter storms can form under a variety of circumstances it’s harder to predict and say definitively how climate change plays a part in a specific event. Winter storms that form over the Great Lakes, for example, which are warmer now, can become snowier (this is known as the lake effect). And while these types of extreme storms certainly existed before then, and have been around since, experts are now studying how climate change may now be creating more opportunities for these to brew or become stronger.
The first known usage of the term “bomb cyclone,” according to Merriam-Webster, was in 1987- born out of an 1980 research paper in which meteorologists were trying to describe the intensity of non-summer storms. The ingredients needed to create this change in pressure are cold, dry air moving from north to south and moist, warm air coming up from the tropics when these two fronts clash, a storm is born. And this precise moment where the pressure drops dramatically, turning a winter storm into a bomb cyclone, is known as bombogenesis.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Bomb cycloneįront and center of many North American minds’ right now is the Christmas “bomb cyclone” which the National Weather Service has dubbed a “ once in a generation winter storm.” Not to be confused with a regular Nor’easter (simply a storm along the East Coast), a bomb cyclone is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a powerful, rapidly intensifying storm associated with a sudden and significant drop in atmospheric pressure.” Specifically, 24 millibars in 24 hours, according to the U.S. So, from “bomb cyclones” and “cold dunkelflautes” to “flash droughts” and “firenados” these are the weird and wacky, sometimes wonderful, sometimes wretched, weather terms you should know.
#Wierd phenomena how to
And we’re figuring how to talk about these changes in real time.
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