Snow storms, heavy freezing rain and now freezing cold too!
Ok, it's still winter, but temperatures down to minus 20 degrees are extreme.
Experts explain this with a weather phenomenon.
Munich - Stormy snowfalls * and now freezing cold.
The weather experts expect minus 20 degrees in the next few days.
Germany is flash frozen.
Especially in the middle of the country, temperatures are falling sharply.
There is frost everywhere.
The south-west remains an exception, reports the German Weather Service (DWD).
“The coldest week in February since 2012 is
ahead of
us,” predicts Dominik Jung, graduate meteorologist from the
Q.met
weather
service
.
Wherever there is fresh snow, it gets bitterly cold.
“Tuesday night will be cold.
At a height of two meters, up to minus 17 degrees are reached, directly above snow it can be down to minus 23 degrees. "
Weather in Germany: polar air brings extreme cold - "Russian whip"
Polar air penetrates into the south, accordingly a week of permafrost awaits us, which also has severe frost in the nights, this is how the DWD describes the current weather situation in Germany.
Small bright spot: Overall, according to the weather experts, the snowfalls are easing.
However, there may still be a few flakes at times and in some areas.
Extreme cold in Germany - polar vortex split weather phenomenon
The cause of the freezing cold in parts of Germany is a weather phenomenon, the so-called polar vortex split.
Arctic air penetrates further than usual into our latitudes.
This leads to heavy snowfalls, as in the last few weeks in Spain and now also here.
Now a bitter cold is spreading in Germany.
Usually there is a cold air vortex over the North Pole - hence the name polar vortex.
The polar vortex is located at a height of about 10 to 50 kilometers - in the so-called stratosphere.
The cold air moves in a circle over the region.
Winds of up to 250 kilometers per hour limit the polar vortex.
They form a barrier and act like a wall, preventing arctic cold air from penetrating into medium latitudes.
However, in winter it happens that warm air enters the eddy.
This weakens the polar vortex - it deforms.
The flow conditions over the North Pole change completely.
If the polar vortex even divides and shifts - that is the polar vortex split.
Such an "outbreak" occurs again and again, explains spokesman for the German Weather Service Friedrich on Deutschlandfunk (Dlf).
“But this time we are hit hard,” says Friedrich.
Icy explosions - polar vortex weather phenomenon
Since mid-December 2020, scientists have observed that the polar vortex is weakening unusually strong.
An anomaly that ESA researchers (ESA stands for European Space Agency) have classified as serious.
Such events can trigger extreme weather.
Especially sorry: Because despite global warming, these unusually strong winter cold spells occur in this country.
"We are currently observing an event in which the polar vortex is split into two parts - one air mass spins over the North Atlantic and one over the North Pacific," explains Anne Grete Straume from ESA.
With ESA's Aeolus satellite, scientists are trying to understand what is throwing the polar vortex out of balance.
Aeolus is the first in orbit satellite to capture the Earth's polar winds directly from space, according to the Space Agency.
It is important for the researchers to find out what triggers or even intensifies this polar weather phenomenon.
Probably the loss of the Arctic sea ice and the increasing warming of the North Atlantic are responsible for this.
It is still too early to draw scientific conclusions, writes the ESA on its website.
But with the Aeolus data, the researchers hope to gain new knowledge.
(ml) * Merkur.de is part of the Ippen-Digital network
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