If you’ve lived in Ohio long enough, you know just how unpredictable the weather is. You can literally witness all four seasons in one week. It’s also very typical for Ohio to have snow on the first day of spring or even 60˚F and rain when January comes around. Recently, however, Ohio has been hit with some crazy weather that not many people were prepared for. Along with other places located in the Midwestern United States, Ohio has been experiencing extremely low temperatures and mounds of snow and ice.
The polar vortex, according to The Guardian, is described as, “…a band of strong winds, high up in the atmosphere that keeps bitterly cold air locked around the Arctic region.” What does this mean for us exactly? Well, these winds have been pushed down because of warmer air traveling upward toward the Arctic. Disturbances in the balance of jet streams have caused extremely cold air to pass down to the states. The warmer air from the south has also broken up the “vortex,” leaving pieces of cold areas to float around for too long. This polar vortex is very similar to the one that hit us back in 2014, but the event almost 5 years ago gave us even lower record-breaking temperatures that lasted far into the month of March. Even so, recently several states have been suffering from huge snow falls, heavy ice, and technological issues due to the freezing weather. “Temperatures fell to -30C (-22F) in Chicago – colder than parts of Antarctica – and -37C in North Dakota,” reported BBC News.
Hundreds of people have been confined to their homes in danger of frostbite and hypothermia, and many cities have been working together to protect homeless people from the cold. Pets have also been at a huge risk because of their exposure to these extreme temperatures. According to Learning English VOA, “The U.S. National Weather Service warns that a wind chill of -32 degrees Celsius could freeze a person’s skin within 15 minutes.” Decisions had to be made to close schools, cancel plane flights, and even stop the mail from being delivered. This brings us back to what is really going on with our planet. Donald Trump gave us a small view of what some people really think climate change is like with his tweet:
The main issue here is that people confuse the difference between weather and climate. The New York Times states, “Climate refers to how the atmosphere acts over a long period of time, while weather describes what’s happening on a much shorter time scale. The climate can be thought of, in a way, as the sum of long periods of weather.” Essentially, just because the polar vortex is hitting the Midwest with low temperatures doesn’t mean the temperature of the entire globe isn’t warmer than usual. Just as Detroit was -12˚ F last week, Burma (Myanmar) was experiencing higher temps at around 91˚ F.
Despite the Earth naturally going through many warming interglacial periods and ice ages, scientist believe the Industrial Revolution is what brought about the slow increase of global temps. This process of transitioning to new manufacturing processes and the burning of fossil fuels began in Great Britain during the 18th century, and according to Climate Policy Watcher, “humans began to significantly add to the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, enhancing the planet’s natural greenhouse effect and causing higher temperatures.” Greater amounts of carbon led to a rise of degrees in Fahrenheit in the following years.
Because of human activity contributing to the rise in global temps, winters may last longer and may even get colder. What has happened to the climate is irreversible, but hopefully in the future there will be further steps taken to curb these greenhouse gas emissions.