Why So Cold? Climate Change May Be Part of the Answer

Jack Kochansky

AP Biology EF Even

Mr. Ippolito

8 January 2018

Why So Cold? Climate Change May Be Part of the Answer

By Henry Fountain

Fountain, Henry. “Why So Cold? Climate Change May Be Part of the Answer.” The New York

Times, The New York Times, 3 Jan. 2018,

www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/climate/cold-climate-change.html?rref=collection

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Last week, much of the US faced a serious cold snap, accompanied in many places with large amounts of snowfall, even in the South, where they are completely unprepared for such eventualities.  Amid all of the signs, many people have been wondering if and how this has to do with climate change.  Researchers such as Marlene Kretschmer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany point out that “There’s a lot of agreement that the Arctic plays a role, it’s just not known exactly how much.”  Because there are many factors that go into impacting weather and the climate, scientists are very careful to look at every piece of evidence and avoid jumping to conclusions.  Other experts like Rick Thoman are also careful to emphasize that even though the scientific community is fairly confident that the Arctic has to do with our recent cold snaps, “. . . the exact connection on the climate scale is an area of active research.”  However, there is a common perspective that with a warmer Arctic as a result of climate change, there is a weaker jet stream in the Western Hemisphere because of a smaller temperature difference between lower and higher altitudes.  Rather than being a clear-cut, direct west-east wind pattern as it usually is, Dr. Timo Vihma of the Finnish Meteorological Institute, high-pressure systems can make the jet stream “more like a big snake around the Northern Hemisphere.”  The result is the big, stagnant, freezing, swirling storms that we had last week.  Normally, the temperature difference between Arctic air and more southern air keeps the two separated, but with global warming, that difference is no longer so big in the winter, and the icy polar winds can escape.  And that is what we have been dealing with throughout the last week.

This unusual weather event has had several serious impacts on cities up and down the East Coast this week, even shutting down some Southern areas completely.  This was the first time in years that places like Florida or South Carolina got significant snow, and they are completely unprepared.  The result is that they are simply stuck, unable to move the snow, and so entire cities of millions of people are all but shut down.  The truth is that “global warming” can have so many more implications than just warming; it leads to all sorts of more extreme weather events.  What is altogether more concerning is that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, clearly does not understand this fact and said in a tweet on December 28, “Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming.”  Unfortunately, the President has a lot of influence over the opinions of his ultra-conservative base, so that much of that group of people now doubts that man-made climate change is real.  Weather events like this one show that climate change is manifesting itself in many different ways, but it will certainly lead to more extreme weather events that our infrastructure will need to work to respond to.  Climate change will also have a serious negative impact on many ecosystems throughout the world, and this unusually cold period of time certainly did some damage to plants and animals in the South that can survive only in warm climates.  Human systems, plants, and animals will all need to adapt to these new changes, and if we do not do anything to slow climate change, the implications on world biodiversity will be devastating.  By understanding the nature of unusual weather events like this one and their connection with global warming, we can more effectively respond to these arising problems and solve them.

I found this article to be very interesting, especially because it dealt with the East Coast’s recent cold snap, the effects of which all of us have felt.  It chose an interesting and relevant topic that is likely to attract a reasonable audience for its attempt to explain this unusually cold and icy weather.  Fountain also did a good job quoting several experts about the likely causes of this cold streak, reflecting their uncertainty and avoiding any misrepresentations of the findings so far.  However, there were also a few things that he could have done to make his article even better.  For example, the article was pretty short, so it was not able to go into much detail about the way that this current “bomb cyclone” works or its larger implications.  It would have been a little better if Fountain had not spent quite so much time talking about uncertainty in such a short article and had elaborated more on the other ideas.  Overall, though, the article was informative without being too long, and it was relevant, especially to us in the northeast who have felt the wrath of mother nature with the cold throughout the past few days.