The Washington Post
If 2015 will be remembered as the year that the vast majority of the world finally agreed to do something about climate change, then 2016 will most certainly be remembered as the year we saw the true, full, drastic, terrible effects of our inaction, as it is much, much, much too late for our feeble attempts at fixing the planet to have any meaningful impact.
Case in point, the North Pole, where it’s fucking winter, like, real winter, saw temperatures above freezing yesterday.
That’s fucking right, the second coldest place on the planet, one of those perma-frozen wastelands that we need to stay perma-frozen to keep us from being drowned alive by all its frozen ocean water, was above freezing yesterday. From The Washington Post:
A balmy 33 degrees or so.
A powerful winter cyclone — the same storm that led to two tornado outbreaks in the United States and disastrous river flooding — has driven the North Pole to the freezing point this week, 50 degrees above average for this time of year.
Yea man, that’s uhh, not normal or good or anything. Fifty fucking degrees above normal. That would be like if it were fucking 75 on Christmas Day in North America, which … shit.
Seriously, those Paris Accords kinda needed to happen about 15 years ago. Then maybe we’d be getting somewhere right now.
The storm, which has winds of up to 100 mph, is pulling all the warm air we’ve had up to the North Pole, where it shouldn’t be.
As this storm churns north, it’s forcing warm air into the Arctic Circle. Over the North Sea, sustained winds from the south are blasting at 70 mph, and gusting to well above 100 mph, drawing heat from south to north. It should be around -20 degrees there today, but instead, it’s above freeze.
Temperatures in the Arctic Circle were hovering around 32 degrees on Wednesday morning, using data from the GFS model.
On Wednesday morning, temperatures over a vast area around North Pole were somewhere between 30 and 35 degrees Fahrenheit, and for at least a brief moment, surpassed the 32-degree threshold at exactly 90 degrees North, according to data from the GFS forecast model.
The temperature there right now is unprecedented, according to The Atlantic:
Winter temperatures have only snuck above freezing at the North Pole once before. Eric Holthaus, Slate’s meterologist, could not find an Arctic expert who had witnessed above-freezing temperatures at the pole between December and early April.
Enjoy your death planet, everyone.
[Via The Washington Post]