What is a Polar Vortex?

Edward Stojakovic, Flickr // CC BY 2.0
Edward Stojakovic, Flickr // CC BY 2.0

If you’ve turned on the news or stepped outside lately, you're familiar with the record-breaking cold that is blanketing a lot of North America. According to The Washington Post, a mass of bone-chilling air over Canada—a polar vortex—split into three parts at the beginning of 2019, and one is making its way to the eastern U.S. Polar vortexes can push frigid air straight from the arctic tundra into more temperate regions. But just what is this weather phenomenon?

How does a polar vortex form?

Polar vortexes are basically arctic hurricanes or cyclones. NASA defines them as “a whirling and persistent large area of low pressure, found typically over both North and South poles.” A winter phenomenon, vortexes develop as the sun sets over the pole and temperatures cool, and occur in the middle and upper troposphere and the stratosphere (roughly, between six and 31 miles above the Earth’s surface).

Where will a polar vortex hit?

In the Northern Hemisphere, the vortexes move in a counterclockwise direction. Typically, they dip down over Canada, but according to NBC News, polar vortexes can move into the contiguous U.S. due to warm weather over Greenland or Alaska—which forces denser cold air south—or other weather patterns.

Polar vortexes aren't rare—in fact, arctic winds do sometimes dip down into the eastern U.S.—but sometimes the sheer size of the area affected is much greater than normal.

How cold is a polar vortex?

So cold that frozen sharks have been known to wash up on Cape Cod beaches. So cold that animal keepers at the Calgary Zoo in Alberta, Canada once decided to bring its group of king penguins indoors for warmth (the species lives on islands north of Antarctica and the birds aren't used to extreme cold.) Even parts of Alabama and other regions in the Deep South have seen single-digit temperatures and wind chills below zero.

But thankfully, this type of arctic freeze doesn't stick around forever: Temperatures will gradually warm up.

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Expeditions Gather Climate Change Clues on Mount Everest in Two New Documentaries

Team members climb up a slope during the expedition to find Sandy Irvine's remains on Mount Everest.
Matt Irving/National Geographic

Two one-hour documentaries premiering tonight reveal what Mount Everest is really like—and what scientists can learn from studying it.

Both docs are produced by and airing on National Geographic. In Lost on Everest, premiering at 9 p.m. EDT, climber Mark Synnott and Nat Geo photographer Renan Ozturk lead a team of seasoned mountaineers on a mission to discover what happened to Andrew “Sandy” Irvine, who vanished with fellow explorer George Mallory during the first Everest climb in June 1924. While Mallory’s body was located by a BBC-sponsored operation in 1999, Irvine’s exact fate has remained a mystery for nearly a century since his disappearance. As Synnott and his companions search for evidence, they encounter their own harrowing set of obstacles, from hurricane-force winds to medical emergencies.

Climbers on Mount Everest
Climbers ascend the Khumbu Icefall, a notoriously dangerous section of the summit route.
Mark Fisher/National Geographic Society

But Mount Everest isn’t only a challenge for adventure-seekers and intrepid investigators—it also holds thousands of years’ worth of information about how climate change has altered the environment, which can help scientists predict its future effects. In Expedition Everest, airing at 10 p.m. EDT, actor Tate Donovan narrates the journey of an international group of scientists and climbers with an ambitious set of data-collecting objectives.

One task is to use drones, laser scanners, and cameras to capture footage of every inch of the ascent, so researchers can create a 360-degree portrait of the mountain and track how glacial melt alters the landscape in the coming years. Since the Himalayas contain the water supply for roughly one-fourth of the world’s population, the increase in glacial melt—which has already doubled since 2000—could threaten the futures of billions of people living in the region.

Scientists drill ice cores on Mount Everest
Mariusz Potocki and members of the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition team collect the highest-ever ice core at 8020 meters (26,312 feet) near the South Col of Everest.
Dirk Collins/National Geographic Society

Even more immediate is the risk of flash floods, which are difficult to predict without a constant feed of weather data from high altitudes. Another goal of the expedition is to install weather stations at five locations along the climbing route, which will monitor temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind speed, and other factors that help alert meteorologists to an impending flood.

Some researchers have joined the expedition to drill deep into the ice at an altitude above 8000 meters (26,000 feet)—Mount Everest's "death zone"—and collect ice cores. These long tubes of ice reveal how the atmosphere has changed over thousands of years. Others are collecting similar cores of sediment at the bottom of a lake, as well as examining how plant and animal life has adapted to the warming temperatures and rising water levels.

Overall, Expedition Everest illustrates how the Himalayas function as an early indicator of what climate change will do to other places.

As climate scientist Anton Seimon explains in the documentary, “We’re getting a window into what the rest of the world is starting to experience—and likely to experience in growing proportions.”

You can watch the double feature tonight, June 30, at 9 p.m. EDT on National Geographic.