Schoenecker's Shenanigans: A shift in international mentality must happen

By: 
Jarrod Schoenecker

The world may look at climate change in many different ways. I believe one thing that can’t be denied truthfully is that it is changing.

As president of the Twin Cities Meteorological Society, I have developed a growing annual Minnesota State of the Climate event. I am lucky to be friends with two of the state’s climatologists who are awesome at remaining neutral to the numbers, as well as being supportive of this endeavor.

Senior Climatologist Kenneth Blumenfeld, Ph.D., and Assistant Climatologist Pete Boulay work in the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Climatology Office and have presented and hosted the aforementioned event the last two years. The thing I can’t shake from those events is how much warmer our nighttime lows are, specifically in the winter.

Parts of northern Minnesota are seeing temperatures as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the winter than our recorded average. It isn’t as extreme in southern Minnesota where we see about a three-to-four degree increase in the winter months.

I don’t think people realize how much these temperature changes matter, specifically the closer you get to the poles. Our jet stream drives how weather patterns interact with one another. That jet stream relies on stronger temperature differences between the poles and the equator region.

A change in temperature and loss of snow and ice pack in the pole regions affects the jet stream. When there are not great cold pools to work from, the jet stream is not as strong and it remains stagnant and meanders. This stagnant jet stream is often what can cause person’s relative personal thinking about what the climate is doing be skewed from the grander picture.

A meandering, slower jet stream typically means that weather systems tend to stay... Pick up a Feb. 16 edition of the Montgomery Messenger to read further. Subscribe at MontgomeryMNNews.com.

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