By P Gosselin
Charismatic Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann posted a comment at Twitter where he wondered what flagship German ZDF television was thinking when its evening news announced the polar vortex was some sort of new phenomenon arising from global warming.
Recently in the media we’ve been hearing a lot about the junk science that a warmer Arctic is somehow miraculously producing extreme cold over vast neighboring continents.
NOAA: “Polar vortex nothing new […] term appeared in 1853”
In a tweet in response to the ZDF’s evening news @heutejournal (Today’s Journal), Kachelmann, a former meteorologist for flagship ARD television, wrote:
Everything is like it always has been.
@heutejournal via@zdf has invented the relationship of the polar vortex split with climate change. The American weather services writes the opposite: ‘It has happened often…’ https://www.noaa.gov/infographic/science-behind-polar-vortex … Why make it up? Isn’t the real threat already enough? Why,@zdf?
Here Kachelmann is referring to a site from the NOAA itself. What follows is the content of the NOAA page:
The science behind the polar vortex.(NOAA)Download
The polar vortex is a large area of low pressure and cold air surrounding the Earth’s North and South poles. The term vortex refers to the counter-clockwise flow of air that helps keep the colder air close to the poles (left globe). Often during winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the polar vortex will become less stable and expand, sending cold Arctic air southward over the United States with the jet stream (right globe). The polar vortex is nothing new – in fact, it’s thought that the term first appeared in an 1853 issue of E. Littell’s Living Age.”
Links to climate change questionable
In response to Kachelmann’s tweet, meteorology expert Dr. Ryan Maue tweeted that the science was far from a consensus on the subject, and that polar vortex splits have been around “for decades”:
We have observed polar vortex splits for decades. They are not new nor caused by climate change. The links to climate change are still controversial & uncertain because climate models do not show an increase. Active area of research. No consensus.”
Cold due to warming, insists top German socialist
Despite the reminders from the authorities, the nuttiness surrounding polar vortices has been widely spread by German politicians as well, for example German Socialist SPD leader Karl Lauterbach, who recently tweeted:
Record cold in winter, record heat in summer. Climate change cannot be denied. The fact that it is now so visible will hopefully change world politics. That will cost massive amounts of money. But later it will be much more expensive. THE generational task.”
Herr Lauterbach, who has no meteorological background, is probably just parroting talking points handed to him by the ultra-alarmist Potsdam Institute, which is desperate to keep the alarmism among the public at a high level.
Kachelmann, who thinks climate change is a serious issue, responded to Lauterbach’s bizarre claim:
There was no record heat in summer and there is no record cold in winter, and no one with any sense ascribes the weather situation in the USA to climate change. See also the American weather service, which knows that this happens “often”: https://www.noaa.gov/infographic/science-behind-polar-vortex …”
