Loading ...Record gain for Greenland Ice Cover, over the summer
“We see that this water vapor is now causing significant cooling of the southern stratosphere, and have also noted a correlation between Southern Hemisphere stratospheric cooling and Northern Hemisphere stratospheric warming (SSWs).
Stratospheric warming during the Northern Hemisphere winter often leads to a disruption of the Polar Vortex, causing large pressure changes, which, in turn, can result in masses of Arctic air being unleashed into the United States and Europe.
These, at least, are the current lines of thinking, backed up by historical data.
However, there are many other factors and forcings at play. Earth’s climate is an impossibly complex system and much more research is needed. This winter will, however, be a great real-world test. Hopefully the season doesn’t play out as expected. Simply put, nations are not setup to deal with a harsh winter of unrelenting polar outbreaks, not this year, far from it.”
“Hunga Tonga is a submarine volcano located under the South Pacific. Its violent eruption on Jan 15, 2022 produced a massive volcanic plume consisting of sulfur and water vapor that touched the mesosphere. It was the highest eruption ever recorded.
Sulfur sent to such lofty atmospheric levels has a global cooling effect. Pinatubo’s 1991 eruption is recent evidence of this. As shown below, Pinatubo’s VEI-6 ‘pop’ cooled the entire planet for approximately 3 years, and by a substantial margin, too”