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Thanks for the follow up Raleigh.  I'm cross posting to Personal, and ASTC, since your contained link doesn't involve a paywall or graphics, which would be both frustrating and rejected by listserve rules.

Correspondingly, as a likely component of global climate change (maybe) and sun spots (of all things), we have a relatively recently discovered atmospheric event called the stratospheric vortex, which basically funnels cold air into the troposphere at the poles and generates a breakdown in the tropospheric vortex (actually the normal layering of troposphere and stratosphere), resulting in warm air at the poles and polar air outbreaks and a highly wobbly jet stream in the temperate latitudes.  It was covered on SciFri a few weeks back.

This upcoming east coast weather weekend is brought to us by such events.

The article from the economist is well worth a read, and the map is amazing.
Thanks again,

C

Begin forwarded message:

From: Raleigh McLemore 
Subject: [Pinhole] Artic Ocean ice sheet' shrinking, September 12, 2012 map
Date: February 8, 2013 8:31:52 AM PST
To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]

From the Economist:

"ON SEPTEMBER 16th 2012, at the height of the summer melt, the Arctic Ocean’s ice sheet had shrunk to an area of 3.41m square kilometres (1.32m square miles), half what it was in 1979. And its volume had shrunk faster still, to a quarter of what it was in 1979, for the sheet is getting thinner as well as smaller. One culprit is global warming, which is fiercer at the poles than elsewhere. The world’s average temperature in 2012 was nearly 0.5°C above the average for 1951-80. In the Arctic, it was up almost 2°C."

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21571386-global-warming-may-make-northernmost-ocean-less-productive-not-more?frsc=dg|a

"We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.  This is a prescription for disaster.  We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."

Carl Sagan

With firm handshake,
Raleigh


Charles Carlson
Senior Scientist | Teacher Institute

http://blogs.exploratorium.edu/whyintercept/
Twitter: @charliec53
email: [log in to unmask] 
Tel:   415-528-4319
Fax:  415-885-6011
exploratorium.edu
facebook.com/exploratorium twitter.com/exploratorium

The Embarcadero, Piers15 & 17
S.F., CA 94111


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