科学美国人60秒 SSS 北极热浪与雪风暴有关（在线收听）

Arctic Heat Waves Linked to Snowpocalypse-Like Storms

February was unusually hot in the arctic. Thawing out temperature: 35 degrees Fahrenheit."It made big news when it got to 35, I don't know if that's t-shirt weather yet, but…"

北极在二月时异常炎热。解冻温度：华氏35度。“当它达到35度时，就产生了重大转变，我不知道这是否是T恤反应出的天气，但是......”

Judah Cohen, a climatologist at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, a company that does consulting on weather and climate. "The arctic relatively is a much warmer place than it used to be."

气候和气候咨询公司气候学家Judah Cohen说。“相对而言，北极比以前温暖得多。”

Over the last few decades, the arctic has heated up two to three times faster than the rest of the planet. But in the same period, Eurasia and the northeastern U.S. have been on a cold streak. With some serious cold air and snow.

在过去的几十年里，北极温度比地球上其他地区热到两三倍。但在同一时期里，欧亚大陆和美国东北部却一直处于寒冷状态。有一些严重的冷空气和雪天气。

Climate-change-denying politicians like to point to the cold snaps as some sort of proof global warming is not happening. But a new analysis of more than six decades of daily temperature and snowfall data by Cohen and his team suggests arctic heat waves may actually be linked to severe cold weather at lower latitudes… perhaps through the polar vortex.

否认气候变化的政客们喜欢指责寒流，因为某些证据表明，全球变暖没有发生。 但Cohen和他的团队对60多年的日常温度和降雪数据的新分析表明，北极热浪实际上可能与低纬度的严寒天气有关......这也许是极涡造成的。

"A warmer arctic in general kind of favors these polar vortex disruptions. And when you get a polar vortex disruption, warm air from the lower latitudes rushes in to the arctic, and you can get extreme warm events like we saw in February. But then the cold air that's normally locked up over the arctic gets displaced and it heads to lower latitudes. It's all connected, I think it's all part of the same phenomenon."

“一般来说，北极是一个温暖的北极地区，有利于这些极地涡旋的破坏作用生成，当你受到极地涡旋破坏时，来自低纬度的暖空气会涌入北极，这就像2月份看到的那样，那里发生了极端温暖的事件。通常被封锁在北极上空的冷空气，会转向低纬度地区，它们都是相互连通的，我认为这些都是同一现象的其中一部分”。

The details are in the journal Nature Communications.

详情见《自然通讯》杂志。

Important caveat: this research is just an observational study. So it doesn't show a definite mechanism for a warm arctic causing more snowpocalypses. But if further studies bear this connection out, perhaps it'll kill the idea that cold weather means no climate change… and help keep snowballs off the senate floor.

重要提醒：这项研究结果只是一项观察性研究。所以它并没有显示出，一个明确的机制，对于一个炎热的北极造成更多的雪灾。但是，如果进一步的研究，能够解决这个问题，也许会有这样的想法：寒冷的天气意味着没有气候变化......并且有助于保持参议院的地位。