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For the first time since 2014, the arctic polar vortex descends to North America.
In parts of the Midwest and New England, about 25 million Americans are on the verge of temperatures below 20 degrees Fahrenheit. In parts of Minnesota and the Dakota, temperatures are 50 degrees below average, which is a life-threatening cold.
The National Weather Service office in Chicago announced that a wind chill of minus 30 to minus 55 degrees Fahrenheit would hit the city from Tuesday to Thursday with a "record cold record (potentially all-weather) " Wednesday.
The term polar vortex describes the mass of cold, low-pressure air flowing through the stratosphere over the Arctic. At times, the circulation of the polar vortex weakens over the course of the winter, causing waves of icy and glacial Arctic air that fragment and drift southward.
The frozen air is conveyed by the jet stream, a current of wind that extends around the hemisphere and divides the air masses of the polar region from those located further South.
This polar air mass has always been present, but scientists have dubbed it the "polar vortex" in 2014, when a cold snap hit a majority of the continental United States.
North America, Europe and. Asia can all be affected by polar vortex, which causes temperatures just too cold for people to be able to stay safely outside.
"You talk very quickly about frostbite and hypothermia, like in a matter of minutes, maybe a few seconds," Hurtington Post Brian Hurley, Meteorologist at the Weather Prediction Center, told Huffington Post.
Hypothermia occurs when your body loses heat faster than you can produce it. Frostbite occurs when the skin and underlying tissues freeze or, in extreme cases, die.
The Chicago National Weather Service said that "dangerously cold wind chills could cause frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 5 minutes". The office suggests covering all exposed skin and bringing pets indoors.
At least two deaths have already been linked to the phenomenon. recent cold snap, CNN reported.
Schools were closed in Chicago and parts of eastern Iowa, in addition to those in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Nearly 2,300 flights were canceled and another 11,800 were delayed, according to Reuters.
We could start to see more often events of polar vortices
Despite the contrary claims of President Donald Trump on Twitter the emergence of a polar vortex n? does not invalidate the scientific consensus on global warming.
A polar vortex is a weather event that occurs regionally on time scales of a day or a week. This last phenomenon is a global phenomenon caused by increased concentrations of certain gases in the Earth 's atmosphere. Global average temperatures are still the highest ever recorded and the oceans are the warmest since we started keeping records.
In fact, recent research shows that the frequency of polar vortex events in winter has increased over the last four decades, perhaps because of climate change.
Although many questions remain, scientists have begun to connect the extreme cold waves to the warming of the Arctic, as reported Inside Climate News. As temperatures rise in the Arctic twice as fast as the rest of the world, the difference between North Pole temperatures and continents at lower latitudes decreases, according to The Conversation. Less temperature disparity means less difference between atmospheric pressure levels, which weakens the jet. This can cause the jet stream to take more direct and shorter routes.
If the jet stream runs smoothly, it can disrupt the natural flow of the polar vortex.
Kevin Loria contributed to an earlier version of this story.
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