Home

On:

Meteorologists with the National Weather Service are predicting that the northern polar vortex is likely to split once again later this month, into not just two, but three separate vortices that are expected to bring unseasonably cold and stormy weather to parts of Europe and North America.

The polar vortex is a low-pressure area of air that resides over both of Earth’s poles, with the vortex at each pole spinning in a counter-clockwise direction, and bordered around their edges by the jet stream. Occasionally, the Northern Hemisphere’s vortex splits into a number of separate gyres that drift south, bringing colder Arctic air along with them.
read more

On:

New studies investigating the ice found at the planet’s polar regions are reporting that a precarious situation appears to be unfolding at the ends of the Earth, with the increased melting of both sea and glacial ice in the Arctic Ocean, Greenland, and even the supposedly-stable glaciers of East Antarctica.
read more

On:

Despite calls by the scientific community for the world to dramatically cut greenhouse gas production to address the problem of global warming, worldwide carbon dioxide emissions rose by 2.7 percent over the course of 2018, the largest increase seen in seven years. This news follows a series of call-to-arms warnings released by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.S. Government’s National Climate Assessment, warning of the urgent need to cut emissions; additionally, a prediction from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasts that El Niño conditions are very likely to form in the Pacific Ocean over the winter — conditions that may push 2019 into being the hottest year on record.
read more

On:

Researchers are predicting that our Sun is about to enter a period of long-term quiet called a grand solar minimum, a state that might begin as soon as 2020, and could last as long as fifty years. While this period will see a decrease in sunspot formation, magnetic activity and ultraviolet radiation output, the decline in solar radiation isn’t expected to help alleviate the problem of global warming in any meaningful way; however, it may cool the extreme upper atmosphere to the coldest it’s been for the past 70 years.
read more