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Aires is an instrument that flies on a

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NASA satellite in Earth orbit and

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collects data about Earth's atmosphere

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what we're seeing in this animation made

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with real data from the airs instrument

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is temperature at about 3,000 feet above

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the surface of the earth dark purple are

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coalesced and red is warmest the

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animation runs from early December 2013

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through the first week of 2014 the polar

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vortex is a region of very cold air that

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forms in the northern hemisphere over

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the Arctic in wintertime the reason it's

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so cold is that this is a region that

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gets no sunlight at all for the entire

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winter season a similar vortex forms in

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the southern hemisphere in their winter

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then polar vortex is normally a

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distorted doughnut of cold around the

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poles yet more or less forms a circle

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though not perfectly in fact a northern

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hemisphere tends to be more distorted

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than in a southern hemisphere this movie

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starts with a fairly normal polar vortex

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concentrated mostly over Canada and the

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Arctic

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but quickly that vortex moves south over

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at the end of the movie you see that it

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becomes very elongated with a big purple

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slash across the entire North Pole with

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that pool of coal they are now sitting

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throughout these two United States and

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you can see unusually low temperatures

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down into northern Florida what's

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unusual here was that a low pressure

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system developed around Hudson Bay and

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as with all low pressure systems in the

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northern hemisphere the air moved

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counterclockwise around it and that

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counterclockwise movement brought very

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cold air from the Arctic all the way

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down into the East Coast the United

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States the polar vortex doesn't act

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alone the Jetstream is actually closely

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associated with it in the northern

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hemisphere the Jetstream is a band of

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very strong winds that move from west to

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east and extend around the entire globe

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at middle latitudes and the jet stream

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always bounds the polar vortex to the

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south what was unusual here obviously is

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that the jet moved so far southward and

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brought with it that air as cold air

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moves south that broke records

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throughout the eastern United States as

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much as 40 degrees below normal and cold