Polar vortex, Canada’s early winter weather linked to melting sea ice, new study claims

With high winds, frigid temperatures and blowing snow sweeping into most of Canada today, many folks are wondering what’s going on with the weather and how this bodes for the future.

According to a new study in Nature Geoscience this week, colder winters in parts of North America, Asia and Europe may be caused by increased melting Arctic sea ice.

The study shows that as the sea ice melts, the dark, open waters absorb more sunlight and trap more heat. This warmth rises in the atmosphere, pushing the jet stream – the fast moving river of air in the upper atmosphere – further north, and dramatically bulging southwards just downstream of that air.

This is exactly what we are experiencing this week – The jet stream is starting to dive deep into the south, bringing the cold, Arctic air with it. Western Canada got hit first, mainly in Alberta where we saw the first widespread snowfall of the season. While Calgary did get walloped back in September, this is really the first time this season the region from Edmonton to Calgary got hit with substantial snow and icy roads.

That same Arctic air mass is now on its way east, crossing the Prairies and into Ontario and Quebec later in the week, and eventually into the Maritimes. It may even spread out over the western side of the Rockies and blanket British Columbia, too.

“You can think of this system as a giant jar of molasses that was spilled across the far north of Canada, and now its just all slumping down to the south,” said Chris Scott, chief meteorologist with The Weather Network in an interview with Yahoo Canada News.

“And it will be spreading out over almost the entire country.”

While we commonly are referring it to this Arctic blast event as the polar vortex, Scott says that really this is not all that unusual for November.

“Let’s keep in mind that we are approaching middle of November and we can experience cold snaps this early, and this one really lies well within the normal spectrum of what we can see in weather,” he said. “It can definitely be a wild ride this time of the year.”

This time around, the culprit is the remnants of Typhoon Nuri, which pumped a lot of warm, moist air into the western Pacific and pushed it into the far north where it became a massive post-tropical system.

While not a hurricane anymore, it still packed a punch as a powerful storm system in the western Bering Sea.

“Whenever you get a very powerful system like this one, it’s going to have other consequences,” Scott warned.

“Ex-Typhoon Nuri most definitely has had an impact on the jet stream, applying it and making it drop way down south across North America.”

The full effect of this, Scott says, will begin to be felt towards the end of the week when millions of folks across the continent will think that we’ve suddenly entered winter.

The massive cool down won’t be disappearing anytime soon, either. The cold weather is expected to stay in much of Canada for the next two weeks.

“Folks should be bracing for an extended period where we will be getting an early taste of winter across the country in terms of temperatures and in some cases even snow,” Scott added.

“This time of year weather can be wild and it is common to have weather patterns settle in for many weeks – sometimes up to a month – where the jet stream is held in a certain position.”

While its not every year that we get an arctic blast that is so pronounced this early, it is a pretty common way for the jet stream to behave.

So for many Canadians, by the time this chilly event dissipates we will be that much closer to winter, so any chance of normal fall-like weather returning will most likely be gone.

And while we may be suffering from the cold now, Scott says we have to be careful of attributing it directly to climate change as the Nature Geoscience study is suggesting.

“Weather captures peoples’ attention and storms are what people really relate to, and scientists are now trying to quantify how storms may be different under climate change,” he said.

“Overall, the global climate is warming – and no doubt this has impact on weather, but at this point we can’t attribute a given winter, cold outbreak or storm with it.”