Rajshekhar Basu Sarkar
eSomethin staff
Every year, around January and February, in Northwest Ohio, school is occasionally cancelled because of cold weather. However, this year, the eastern United States has seen some of the most severe winter weather storms in years. Those storms, according to many individuals, are caused by climate change.
WTOL 11 meteorologist Chris Vickers said, “The recent winter storms have been unprecedented in many respects.” Vickers also said that, “The first ingredient was a very large Arctic air mass that spread southward out of the Arctic Circle.”
Vickers explained that certain, “meteorologists had warning signs that this would likely happen due to the detection of what was known as a ‘stratospheric warming’ event back in mid-January.”
With the cold air in place, the next ingredient was an active southern branch of the jet stream.
This “provided the final two ingredients of a major winter storm, needed moisture from the Gulf and a disturbance that developed an intense area of low pressure,” Vickers said. “This provided the necessary ingredients for areas as far south as Florida to receive snowfall and locations across the Carolinas to be buried in an historic snowstorm that resulted in over one foot of snow.”
Climate change plays a role in extreme weather events. It, according to Vickers, “disrupts the natural cycle and evolution of weather.” By disrupting the natural cycle, Vickers believes that “This can create more erratic jet stream fluctuation, add more moisture to the atmosphere enhancing precipitation, and in some instances influence severe and extreme weather.”
Our “environment and atmosphere is in a delicate balance and small changes to our environment and have larger consequences when it comes to our weather which is in constant change and motion!”.
Vickers also said “Many people will cite one particular weather event or cold snap as anecdotal evidence that climate change is not happening.”
He also said “No single weather event can be completely caused by or directly tied to a changing climate.”
Vickers said “Studies have shown that some more extreme outbreaks of cold air from the Arctic may become more likely, even in a warming climate due to a weakening and disruption of the polar jet stream.”
He also said, “While this colder air spills south, it leaves the polar regions dangerously vulnerable to extreme warmth and melting polar ice caps, something that has been accelerated over the past few decades.”
Vickers said, “While some climate change is absolutely natural, some is not.” He said, “I always say, it is best we be good stewards of the environment as we don’t want to discover unintended or extreme harm to our one and only Earth in the future.”
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