aNewDomain.net — The experts all agree it will be the coldest Super Bowl ever played. And the cold could be a huge game changer. When you’re not at the field, if you want to, you can go ice fishing and even drive your pickup out onto the lake. A new kind of tailgate party for the diehards. If it does turn out to be frigid on the windy, humid meadows of East Rutherford, N.J., be glad you let the Broncos and Seahawks go to New Jersey while you stay at home with the TV and central heating.
Welcome to climate change in action.
Business Insider said: “The Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks arrived Sunday in suburban New York for Super Bowl 48, what will be the first outdoor cold-weather clash in the NFL Super Bowl era that began in 1967.”
Yet the U.S. policy debate carries on as if global climate change, an obvious culprit in this freeze-out, is still not happening. Out-of-date scenarios, research and observations are being used to propose emission reduction targets that would still lead to catastrophe even if fully implemented. Check the field this year and compare it to the picture below. How much has our climate shifted?
The Superbowl pre-global warming. Photo credit: aNewDomain.net
Climate Code Red
This leap in cold-climate weather stems from the Arctic, the planet’s natural freezer. The Arctic is unusually warm, which means its freezer door is open, sending frigid air into North America and Eurasia. David Spratt, the co-author of Code Red Alert, explains:
It’s a cliche that a picture tells a story better than a thousand words, and it’s really true in the case of this extraordinary map of weather modeling of northern hemisphere temperature anomalies (variations from the expected values based on climate records) for 29 January 20. It shows swathes of North America and northern Eurasia with winter temperatures up to 20 degrees Celsius (20C) below the average for this time of the year (deep purple), whilst much of the Arctic is up to 20C warmer than usual (bright red). If the Arctic is the northern hemisphere’s refrigerator, then the freezer door has been opened wide, with frigid air draining into USA/Canada/Eurasia, and unusually warm air rushing into the Arctic.”
Image credit: Climate Code Red
He goes on to say:
The reason is well understood and its climate-change-driven destabilisation of the Jet Stream. The Jet Stream is the river of high altitude air that works to separates Arctic weather from that of northern Europe, Russia and Canada, and which governs much northern hemisphere weather. Arctic summer sea-ice loss ice loss has added to ocean and atmospheric heat, pushing the Jet Stream into a more meandering, S-shape pattern, dragging down and stalling cold and wet conditions over Europe, and bringing extreme weather in its wake. There is evidence connecting sea-ice loss to the more severe and extreme weather patterns in Europe and North America, consistent with research from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). As Arctic melting and warming destabilize the jet stream and making it more ‘wavy’, it allows frigid air to plunge farther south. As the jet stream waves become larger, they slow down or even stall at times, leading to a significant increase in so-called blocking events, such as the current stalled cold front. These cause extreme weather.”
Image Credit: Climate Code Red
Whichever team you root for, let’s hope neither suffers too much from the obvious (and incredibly fact-based) global climate change.
For aNewDomain.net, I’m David Michaelis.
Based in Australia, David Michaelis is a world-renowned international journalist and founder of Link Tv. At aNewDomain.net, he covers the global beat, focusing on politics and other international topics of note for our readers in a variety of forums. Email him at DavidMc@aNewDomain.net.
Time magazine blames the recent “polar vortex” that brought record cold temperatures across America on man-made “global warming” In an article headlined “Another Ice Age?” appearing almost four decades ago, Time said “scientists” had found evidence of “global cooling” in an expansion of the “circumpolar vortex.”Are they right now and wrong then or are they wrong now but right then….or maybe both? The Laugh Stand in Sydney has two openings 7pm and 8pm. Perhaps your material would find a more receptive audience there…yes? I am gratefully not David Michaels.