Okay, There's the Heat. It Had to be Somewhere.

 

Nothing fuels skepticism about the climate emergency more than cold snaps of the sort now affecting western Canada. In previous years it's been the dreaded "polar vortex" that has plagued eastern Canada.

One thing climate change has taught us is that, when it is unduly cold in one region, you will find some other region that is unduly warm, even hot. Currently that heat can be found across America's southern states and, wait for it, in Alaska.

The South and Southeast remain under the influence of a system that will provide above-normal temperatures through midweek.

"Record warm temperatures are expected for broad areas of the South," Mullinax said. "Parts of the South Central U.S. will soar into the 70s and 80s once again this afternoon, with temperatures becoming warmer across much of the Deep South by Tuesday."

At the island community of Kodiak, the air temperature at a tidal gauge hit 19.4C (67F) degrees on Sunday, the highest December reading ever recorded in Alaska, said scientist Rick Thoman of the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. He called it “absurd.”

A few years ago, in the middle of the long Arctic night, temperatures got well above the freezing mark inside the Arctic Circle. No sunlight to heat anything. Middle of winter. It was a heatwave. In 2014, snow and freezing rain brought Atlanta, Georgia to a standstill.  Meanwhile Barrow, Alaska basked in mid-60s temperatures.

It all comes down to physics. The effects of Hadley cells and Rossby waves. Wild gyrations in the Jet Stream. The old normal, the Holocene, has given way to the Anthropocene, our new normal.