This is scientific American's 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

February was unusually hot in the Arctic, falling out temperatures, 35 degrees Fahrenheit.

I mean, made big news when they got up to 35, I don't know if that's exactly a t-shirt weather yet.

Judy Cohen, a climatologist at atmospheric and environmental research.

It's a company that does consulting on weather and climate.

The Arctic relatively is a much warmer place than it used to be.

Over the last few decades, the Arctic is heated up two to three times faster than the rest of the planet.

But in the same period, Eurasia and the

Northeastern US have been on a cold streak with some serious cold air and

snow. Snow McGadden. Snow McGadden. Snow McGadden. It is Snow McGadden. Snowmageddon 09.

Snowmageddon.

Snowpoglips.

Climate change denying politicians like to point to the cold snaps as some sort of proof global

warming is not happening.

But a new analysis of more than six decades of daily temperature and snowfall data

by Cohen and his team suggests Arctic heat waves may actually be linked to severe cold weather at lower latitudes, perhaps through

the polar vortex.

What happens is I think that a warmer Arctic in general kind of favors these polar vortex

disruptions and when you get a pull of vortex disruption

warm air from the lower latitudes rushes into the Arctic and you get these

can get very extreme warm events like we saw in February but then the cold air that's normally

locked up over the Arctic gets displaced and it heads to lower latitudes so it's

...