The past few years it has been creeping southward as the jet stream weakens.
According to the National Weather Service:
"It ALWAYS exists near the poles."
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains:
"The polar vortex suddenly weakened [in 2014], and a huge high-pressure system formed over Greenland. The high-pressure system blocked the escape of all that cold air in the jet stream, and allowed part of the polar vortex to break off and move southward."
Despite the frigid temperatures, winters are actually getting warmer.
By 2050, cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore could lose a month or more of days with temperatures below freezing.
Southern states, like Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee, could see their average winter lows increase above 32Â degrees.
Australians right now are suffering through 120-degree days and 96.6-degree nights.
It's so hot there, bats are literally falling from trees.
The report, State of the Climate in 2017, released last summer, states carbon-dioxide concentrations in Earth's atmosphere climbed to the highest levels "in the modern atmospheric measurement record and in ice core records dating back as far as 800,000 years."
According to a US National Climate Assessment released in November, "impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country," and "climate-related threats to Americans' physical, social, and economic wellbeing are rising."
The second volume of the congressionally mandated quadrennial report goes on to state:
"Climate change is loading the dice against us, it's going to affect our water, food and ecosystems. This report is important because it shows it's already happening where we live, not on far-off islands or at the poles."
The dozens of draft report chapters break down how much man-made climate change is already not only affecting the environment in the United States but also the economy.
For example, fisheries, tourism, human health, and public safety are being "transformed, degraded or lost due in part to climate change impacts, particularly sea level rise and higher numbers of extreme weather events."
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