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Despite what’s happening in Alaska and the Midwest, a recent study of centuries of weather suggests we have record warming ahead.

Researchers looking at weather patterns since the end of the last Ice Age predict that average surface temperatures will be at their highest point in human history by the end of this century. But we’ll survive: In the last 11,300 years, humans endured a planet warmer than today’s, as they built their earliest civilizations.
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As glaciers melt and sea levels rise, threatening coastal cities, geologists are trying to predict the future by looking at what happened when sea levels rose in the past. Meanwhile, high levels of methane are showing up in the Arctic, and there’s a big danger that a huge rise of temperatures in the Arctic will destabilize huge amounts of methane currently frozen in the sea ice on the ocean floor.
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Sudden stratospheric warming has split the polar vortex in two. The polar vortex, which forms as the atmosphere loses heat to space in long Arctic winter night, was split in two by massive heating from below, as a series of intense storms in the far north Pacific intensified. Energy went upwards from the lower atmosphere around the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau and broke into the stratosphere, causing major sudden warming.

But wouldn’t that make it warmer instead of colder? Surprisingly, no–this creates SEVERE winter weather.
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Climatologists have discovered that West Antarctica is warming TWICE as fast as they previously thought it was.

This unexpectedly big increase adds to fears the ice sheet will thaw, causing the sea level to rise and drown coastal cities all over the world. West Antarctica holds enough ice to raise world sea levels by 11 feet if it ever all melted, although this is a process that would take centuries (allowing us time to prepare?) In addition to offering a more complete picture of warming in West Antarctica, the new study shows for the first time that significant melt is occurring during the summer.
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