The polar vortex: a Q&A with environmental science teacher Elizabeth Hurley

Rank & File: Why do people disagree about whether the polar vortex is real?

Elizabeth Hurley: I don’t think they disagree about if it’s real, it’s that they disagree about whether it was caused by human induced climate changed or not. I think the polar vortex is real—it is a documented weather phenomenon; it has a name; it’s not made up, it got cold. I think it is real, but I think the discussion is whether climate change, also known as global warming, is the root of the problem and whether humans caused it or not.

R&F: Do you think the polar vortex is valid proof that global warming is happening?

EH: It’s funny that you ask that—we just started our global warming unit [in Environmental Systems and Societies]. We’re teaching our students, and everybody needs to understand, there is not one single weather pattern or event that is proof that the climate is changing and the environment is warming. It’s a whole complicated tangle of the events and occurrences that are providing evidence that aour climate is changing, and scientists believe that the warming of the planet is causing those changes in climate. But in short, the average surface temperature is getting warmer and that is what is causing change in what we call weather, and that is making the planet’s surface temperature warmer and causing changes in weather patterns. So one of the effects of global warming is more extreme weather—not necessarily everything is hotter, but the weather is getting more extreme.

R&F: Do you think that human behavior is the cause of the polar vortex phenomenon, or was it inevitably going to happen whether humans inhabited this earth or not?

EH: I don’t know that it is fair to say that we would know what would happen if we hadn’t been here. Again, it’s just one single isolated weather event and I don’t think it’s fair to hang a whole discussion of human-induced climate change on just that one incident. I do think that science points to the polar vortex being related to global warming—climate change. That’s part of what we’re seeing now: an extreme weather event that’s part of all these other changes that we’re seeing. Polar vortex can happen even if we hadn’t been human beings on the planet. I don’t think there is enough evidence to prove that climate change isn’t happening. [This event] doesn’t disprove all the evidence that we have out there to tell that climate change is accruing.

R&F: Did you experience the last vortex?

EH: I was in high school myself and I’m not sure. I guess we had a really big snow event in [19]89, I think. I don’t remember the term polar vortex, but that doesn’t mean anything. Climate change and global warming weren’t in the news like they are now. It wasn’t really something we talked about at the time, not that people weren’t talking about it, but it wasn’t something teenagers were partially exposed to and aware of. So I’m not sure that I would have been paying action to that term at the time. I remember a snow storm event in [19]89 when the school shut down, and walking to the grocery store on all the main roads with my mom. I know that there was a blizzard in [19]96 so, you know, I don’t really remember those terms. But I was so much younger then; I don’t know I was paying attention in the way I pay attention now.

R&F: Do you think there is much more hype about the topic than there needs to be?

EH: I think there was hype about it because people like to argue about whether climate change is actually happening, and I think that people who want to reject the scientific evidence jumped on this as an opportunity to further their position that climate change is not possibly happening. I think that’s part of what builds up to this polar vortex thing.

As [I] said, global warming isn’t just about temperature changes rising. That’s a part of it, that average surface temperatures are rising, but the other part is all the other climate changes we see mean more extreme weather patterns, so that could be extreme hot or extreme cold. It could be a hurricane, it could be a much more major weather event than we would have seen had the surface temperature of the planet not been increasing in temperature.