Nautilus

Wild-Winter Whodunnit—Climate Change Over the U.S. With a Slow Jet Stream?

This map produced by NOAA shows the land-surface temperature anomaly: how the temperature deviated from normal, on average, over the month. The darkest red areas were 12 degrees Celsius (22 degrees Fahrenheit) above average, while the darkest blue areas were 12 degrees Celsius below average.NOAA

A question hangs like a cloud over the deeply weird winter: Why? What might explain the bizarre warmth of western North America, while the east was buried in a slow-motion avalanche?

Nobody knows for sure, but there’s a very plausible link to climate change. A fast-warming Arctic could alter the jet stream, the vast river of air

 

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