Depending on how far east winter storm tracks travel up the east coast, the battle line between cold
arctic air masses to the west and warm Atlantic air to the east causes significant temperature changes.
The coldest weather of the season is barreling into the U.S. this week with a series of «dangerously cold»
arctic air masses.
This allows the lower pressure and very cold
arctic air mass to expand further south, chilling everything well down to Scotland.
By early December, British Columbia was locked in the grips of
an arctic air mass the likes of which hadn't been seen in the province for several years.
Not exact matches
Long story short, the polar vortex is the result of global warming changing the semi-permanent weather system over the
arctic regions resulting in movement of cold
air masses from the
arctic region to parts of North America, such as Canada and, unfortunately, poor Buffalo.
Do GCM's «create» cold fronts and the
arctic air flows when they run, or are they «static» heat exchange models only (radiation received and radiation released are obviously their «drivers»... But what happens after the
air masses have been «driven» for the equal of one or two «years» — do we see flows in the tropics, mid-latitudes, and polar latitudes than resembles earth's circulation?
And that heat transfer from as yet unfrozen seawater may generate the higher
arctic pressures that drive cold
air masses southward.
However the polar vortex remains over the
arctic regions as a great
mass of swirling freezing
air that persistently circulates counter-clockwise.
As a result of a weakening polar vortex, the movement of the
air mass in the
arctic begins to change.
Rather than flow around the
arctic in a circular manner, the movement of the cold
air becomes wavier, bringing the
mass further and further south (see the pictures above).
And, once the summer season is passed, the ever - colder
Arctic air masses remove even more heat from the under - ice water up through the sea ice by conduction into the -25 deg
arctic air.