By Thanksgiving most people have started to get out their cold weather gear, especially for the traditional Turkey Bowl game that many families will play Thursday and through the weekend.
But while the thermometer is slipping as is should in most places, in the Arctic it’s actually rising, so much so that right now the average temperature is 36 degrees warmer than normal.
It’s polar night there now — the sun isn’t rising in much of the Arctic. That’s when the Arctic is supposed to get super-cold, when the sea ice that covers the vast Arctic Ocean is supposed to grow and thicken.
But in fall of 2016 — which has been a zany year for the region, with multiple records set for low levels of monthly sea ice — something is totally off. The Arctic is super-hot, even as a vast area of cold polar air has been displaced over Siberia.
You gotta wonder how the Chinese pulled that off because, as you know, president-elect Donald Trump insists climate change is a hoax perpetuated by them.
And to make matters worse, scientists say the Arctic ice isn’t covering as much area as it has in the past. So what’s up?
“It’s about 20C [36 degrees Fahrenheit] warmer than normal over most of the Arctic Ocean, along with cold anomalies of about the same magnitude over north-central Asia,” Jennifer Francis, an Arctic specialist at Rutgers University, said by email Wednesday.
“The Arctic warmth is the result of a combination of record-low sea-ice extent for this time of year, probably very thin ice, and plenty of warm/moist air from lower latitudes being driven northward by a very wavy jet stream.”
As you pull on your heavy sweatshirt to stay warm this weekend, keep in mind that warmth isn’t a good idea in all contexts, especially when the impact of a warmer Arctic means rising sea levels, changes in ocean currents and melting glaciers.