In a reversal of this year's extraordinary winter weather, Greenland suffered the wrath of North America's epic heat waves in 1889 and 2012, a new study reveals. "Last winter in the eastern United States, people associated the cold with the behavior of the polar vortex," said lead study author William Neff, a fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Though more than a century apart, both massive surface melts were triggered by soaring temperatures east of the Rocky Mountains, according to findings published yesterday (April 24) in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. It turns out that North America's furnacelike heat was funneled toward Greenland by an atmospheric river, a narrow, fast-flowing current of moist, warm air, Neff and his co-authors found.
Read More http://ift.tt/1iqx5L4
No comments:
Post a Comment