this is the polar vortex a spinning mass of frigid air building up in the stratosphere
since August and it's on Pace to absolutely wreck the Northern Hemisphere this winter it has so far
been kept at Bay by a strong wind current known as the polar jet stream but the jet stream is
weakening and there's evidence to suggest that it will weaken even more in the coming months making
the growing polar vortex collapse and unleashing a flood of frozen air in the US Canada northern
Europe and Russia the likes of which we've never seen before I made a video about elino 2020 three
and I learned so much in fact we had a hurricane in San Diego so this is really important so just
what's going on here and what exactly should we all expect this winter let's figure this
out together I'm Ricky and this is Two Bit da Vinci
this video is sponsored by beam when I first heard about the polar vortex collapse I started digging to understand exactly what was going on and how it
works the polar vortex is a low pressure system that forms in the upper atmosphere above the
troposphere where most of the weather happens it is made of a large mass of very cold air
that rotates counterclockwise around the North Pole and clockwise around the South Pole these
two vortices are surrounded by strong jet streams which are bands of fast moving air that separate
the cold polar air from the warmer air in the middle latitudes climatologists are talking about
a possible collapse of the polar vortex but what exactly does that mean so it turns out it means
that the large Vortex over the North Pole can slow down and break down into smaller vortices and
even change directions completely this can have devastating effects on global weather patterns
particularly during winter mostly affecting Canada and the US and to a lesser extent Europe and
Siberia a couple of questions immediately popped up in my head the first is why is this happening
is this something new or has this happened before and if so how bad will it be this time around my
next question was should we be worried and what can we do to prepare so let's dive in and start
by looking for the answer to the first question why do climatologists say the polar vortex May
collapse after reading the first article on this topic I immediately realized that I wouldn't be
able to understand any of it without looking into how the polar vortex works in the first place and
how it protects us from bone chilling Winters the answer I found is twofold it's fascinating right I
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there's a temperature and pressure difference between the Equator and the poles this difference
creates a tendency for cold air to travel from the poles toward the equator at ground level and hot
air to travel over the cold air in the opposite direction toward the poles however as it travels
toward the equator right around here the cold air warms up before reaching the equator and begins
to rise getting sucked back up to the poles this creates these two sorts of donut-shaped swirls of
wind called polar cells something similar happens with the hot air that rises near the equator and
travels North in the upper atmosphere forming two other donut shaped swirls called Hadley
cells both the polar and Hadley cells tend to push cold air toward the equator near the surface but
what happens here right between those two sets of cells the air between 30° and 60° latitude
is dragged by the polar and Hadley cells and forced to spin in the opposite direction like
a gear connecting the two sets of cells this forms a third set called the feral cells but
okay why is all this important and what does it have to do with the polar vortex this is where
things get interesting you see here in the feral cells the air travels in the opposite direction to
the polar cells moving warm air toward the poles near the ground and cold air toward the equator
on the upper atmosphere this clash between the two streams of air is in part what keeps the cold air
away from most of the northern hemisphere however there was one thing that didn't really make sense
to me I would expect the heavier colder air moving south from the North Pole to Simply slide beneath
the hotter lighter air and keep traveling south so why doesn't that happen I did a bit more digging
and found out it's because of the Coriolis effect I won't go into all the details here but in short
the coros effect is the way that objects or fluids seem to curve or bend when they move
over or near the the surface of the Earth toward the poles this is caused by the difference in
speed at different latitudes which is zero at the poles and around 1,000 m per hour near the
equator so imagine you're standing on a spinning merry ground and you want to throw a ball to your
friend who's sitting in the middle if you throw the ball at a straight line it won't go where
you want it to go it will seem to curve away from your friend this is because you and your friend
are moving at different speeds on the mer ground this is exactly what happens with the feral cells
they're pushing hotter air toward the PO poles the same way you were throwing the ball to your friend
at the center of the merar round to conserve angular momentum as it travels polewards the
air has to speed up to the east bending its path eventually it spins so fast that it stops moving
forward and creates a strong spinning current between the polar and feral cells wind speeds
inside the jet stream can reach a staggering 250 M an hour that's 60% stronger than a category 5
hurricane but this winter that is about to change and the consequences will be pretty bad we'll get
to what happens when the polar vortex collapses in just a minute first let's find out what makes
it collapse the difference in temperature and pressure between the Equator and the poles and
the Coriolis effect are what cause polar jet streams this jet stream in turn confines the
freezing Winds of the Polar vortices above the poles if the polar vortex collapses it might be
because a jet stream isn't strong enough to keep it contained so why would this happen if it's
weaker it must mean that the forces that cause the jet streams are weakening we just saw that
the Coriolis effect is a consequence of the speed of the Earth's rotation the Earth always spins at
roughly the same speed that doesn't change during a polar vortex collapse and the Coriolis effect
doesn't change either by the powers of deduction that only leaves one option the polar vortex can
weaken and collapse if the temperature difference between the poles and the equator is reduced and
the circulation becomes weaker or more erratic this can make the wind patterns and the jet
stream wavy and unpredictable instead of being a perfect line en circling the poles the best
analogy I can think of is a spinning top when the top spins really fast it's perfectly stable and
all points of the surface rotate in A Perfect Circle but as the spin gets slower and weaker
we start to see a little bit of wobble and it loses its balance until everything just comes
crashing down something similar can happen to the polar vortex for example when a heat wave
hits the stratospheric polar vortex it can cause a major sudden stratospheric warming event raising
the atmosphere's temperature by as much as 50° C in just a few days once weakened The Vortex
can buckle and even break apart into separate smaller vortices it can even reverse direction or
completely disappear I'll show you some really mesmerizing footage from NASA showing this
disruption in action in just a minute so don't go anywhere anyway when that happens cold Arctic
air can breach the polar jet stream and flood the land in mid latitudes which is where most
of us live but next question obviously has to be has this happened before it turns out that polar
vortex collapses aren't actually rare at all they happen pretty much every other year with varying
intensity but when they do we usually get historic blizzards and record low temperatures across the
board now to be fair there are many cold snaps during winter that have nothing to do with the
polar vortex also polar vortex disruptions don't always wreak havoc in the northern hemisphere as
NASA researchers Lawrence Coy and Steven pson who specifically work on predic in major disruptions
on the polar vortex said in an interview but some of the worst blizzards in US history have
been linked to Polar vortices this is a table showing some of the strongest polar vortex
related blizzards the Great Blizzard of 1899 is on the top 10 list of the worst storms of
US history but what makes it unique is that it hit the hardest in Florida Louisiana and
Washington DC I found there have been many other collapses but none are so revealing as the one
that happened during December 2012 and January 2013 caused by a sudden stratospheric warming
event this footage is absolutely amazing in mid December there is a beautiful perfectly defined
Vortex over the North Pole then near New Year's Day a heatwave hits from the south disrupting the
spinning Vortex you can really see how everything breaks apart in early January and by February the
vortex has completely collapsed on itself sending little vortices of cold air to toward the US and
Europe this particular event caused a massive blizzard in the tri-state area as well as colder
than average winter weather in the UK the 2012 2013 polar vortex collapse is what popularized
polar vortices and made it cool in the mainstream media the story would repeat itself that very
year the polar vortex would reform as we approach October 2013 strengthening and then breaking down
again in early January 2014 leading to another record-breaking with season okay so now we know
what causes the polar vortex to break down we know that it's happened quite frequently in the
past and that when it does it unleashes snow mageddon on the mid latitudes of the northern
hemisphere but what does the forecast look like for the foreseeable future now forecasting weather
patterns is an entire field of study and I don't pretend to be a climatologist or meteorologist
so take everything with a grain of salt what we can do however is look at the things that could
trigger a polar vortex collapse and assess How likely it is that those conditions will happen
this winter the first thing we need for a polar vortex collapse is a polar vortex right now if
you're probably thinking don't we always have a polar vortex actually no during the summer times
when the poles get too much sunlight and they're too warm the air is just too weak to maintain a
Vortex polar vortices in the North Pole usually start forming in August and strengthen as winter
arrives reaching a peak strength in December well the stratospheric temperature is the lowest and
the most dangerous we found a weather report from last September 2023 confirming that a polar vortex
was beginning to form over the North Pole and that was rapidly strengthening no weather model can
accurately predict how this Vortex will evolve until next January but it is forming and it's
getting stronger as stratospheric temperatures continue to drop the red line here shows the
temperature dropping from July to September it's also pretty close to the blue line that
represents stratospheric temperatures last year which ultimately led to a Vortex that collapsed
in January February 2023 the next question is are there signs of potential disruptions this
time around we started looking for the most recent weather reports for the polar vortex and found at
least one report claiming a weak early disruption already underway in late October this looks a lot
like what happened last year later that season a major warming event caused the vortex to collapse
completely I wanted to see if that particular Vortex collapse had any major effects on winter
weather so I started looking for reports of major blizzard during the first 2 Months of the Year it
turns out that it didn't hit us as hard here in the US but it was felt really strongly in
the UK even though the 2022 2023 winter season was the second warmest on record in Europe the
UK saw The Season's coldest day on January 19th reaching 5 degre f -5° c shortly after
the sudden stratospheric warming event that's not the lowest on record but it's still really
darn cold for a country where average winter weather ranges from 2 to 7° C and R dip below
zero I was trying to figure out what could cause these sudden stratospheric warming events or ssws
and one thing kept popping up El Nino El Nino is a phenomenon that occurs when the surface waters
of the Eastern Pacific Ocean become unusually warm affecting the weather patterns and climate in the
region and Beyond elino events happen irregularly every few years usually around Christmas time
and can last for several months El Nino can have significant impact on the ocean currents Fisheries
agriculture and biodiversity of the affected areas but it can also have far-reaching effect
on the global climate because it sends out waves of unusually warm air toward the poles I found
that these heat waves were the culprits behind some of the ssw events we've seen after digging a
little bit deeper I found that there is a strong correlation between the number of ssws over the
North Pole and El Nino events the stronger the El Nino event the stronger the Heat Wave and
the stronger the stratospheric warming event the stronger the stratospheric warming event the more
likely the polar vortex will collapse on average two out of three ssws lead to A disruption of the
polar vortex so the key question then is how strong will this year's El Nino be and spoiler
alert it's going to be a beast we made an entire video about El Nino a couple months ago explaining
why we thought this season's elino event is going to be particularly strong if you haven't watched
it I highly recommend checking it out after this video we are already in a confirmed ELO phase of
the Eno system we've known that since July or August reached moderate strength in September
and now there's a 95% chance that will develop into a strong El Nal before December peaking in
January and February when it Peaks and even before then there's a good chance it'll send
strong heat waves toward the poles triggering strong warming events in the stratusphere and
disrupting the jet stream and the polar vortex on one side we have a strengthening polar vortex on
the other we have a strengthening El Nino that could disrupt even the strongest polar vortex
I don't know about you but this feels like a recipe for a freezing disaster but regardless
of the danger there's a silver lining the worst effects of a polar vortex collapse are short with
really strong cold blizzards and cold spells the real danger is that it can come quite unexpectedly
and there's really not much we can do about it so be prepared make sure to have backup tanks
of propane for heating or firewood whatever you can do to be ready just in case cuz you never
know now if you want to really do a deep dive on how the El Nino Works check out this video next