{"id":66741,"date":"2019-05-18T05:01:46","date_gmt":"2019-05-18T09:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huntsville.dopperonline.ca\/?p=66741"},"modified":"2021-01-29T08:05:39","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T13:05:39","slug":"the-basics-of-climate-change-explained-for-non-scientists-hugh-holland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/the-basics-of-climate-change-explained-for-non-scientists-hugh-holland\/","title":{"rendered":"The basics of climate change explained for non scientists ~ Hugh Holland"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/h6>\n

Scientists have shown that a growing layer of greenhouse gasses (including CO2 from burning fossil fuels) is collecting in the atmosphere, acting as a greenhouse and trapping an increasing amount of heat from the sun. When white glaciers and white polar ice that normally reflect heat are melted, they expose dark surfaces that absorb more heat, and both the warming and the melting are accelerated.<\/p>\n

Effect on weather<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The polar vortex is a mass of low-pressure cold air swirling like a whirlpool (vortex) above the earth\u2019s poles. (It is about 1,000 km in diameter)<\/p>\n

Natural convection tries to push the rotating mass of high-pressure hot air from the equator towards the poles, thereby constraining the polar vortex to their normal north and south polar locations.<\/p>\n

The interface between the rotating masses of cold and warm air is called the jet stream.<\/p>\n

Rapid polar warming is reducing the temperature differential between the poles and the equator, thereby destabilizing the jet stream and causing the polar vortex to intermittently push masses of cold polar air to mid-continent, followed by bursts of warm equatorial air moving toward the poles.<\/p>\n

These increasingly erratic oscillating cold-warm cycles produce the following results:<\/p>\n