In the atmospheric layer above it, about 10 to 30 miles up, is the stratospheric polar vortex, where every winter a sunlight-starved Arctic spins up a mass of cold air that, ultimately, dissipates ...

A new study challenges the idea that climate change is behind the erratic wintertime behavior of the polar jet stream, the ...

As we sweat away the summer, imagine walking out of 98-degree heat and into a 72-degree, climate-controlled ballpark to watch ...

From last winter’s polar vortex to this week’s heat wave, Chicagoans have experienced several degrees of uncomfortableness in a few short months. We weather the extreme weather well enough, thanks to ...

What do the clouds on Jupiter, dust storms on Mars and rainstorms on Titan all have in common? They look like they belong on ...

This winter, the polar vortex winds have stayed consistently stronger than average, corresponding to anomalously low atmospheric thickness over the Arctic (and generally warmer than averaged ...

The polar vortex has been snapping back and forth from a normal to a stretched state with unusual frequency this year, hence all of the cold snaps, Cohen said.

Winter, which is warming faster than any other season for much of the US, seems to be making a comeback for the first time in years; this January was the coldest in the Lower 48 since 1988.

How Alaska’s cold keeps ending up in the Lower 48 A few atmospheric factors — including the polar vortex — have come together to make the US the epicenter of cold this winter.