Planet Earth Needs You

Car frozen in a Texas garage from a broken water pipe By Michael Coppola and Nancy Williams Will the recent winter storm in Texas be the wake up call to do what needs to be done to put the brakes on climate change? One might be naturally perplexed that with a warming planet that southern locations are getting colder winters and not warmer winters. Some understanding of the Earth’s weather patterns will help. Our weather is driven by the difference in temperature and density of air masses in adjacent areas. The polar vortex is a band of very cold air that normally rotates around the North Pole and stays far north. The jet stream flows well south of the polar vortex and brings warm air from the tropics to the mid-latitudes making locations in the higher mid-latitudes warmer, such as Great Britain which has much milder temperatures than it would have for its latitude. Records show that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet; three to six times faster in fact. That means