The primary science-related “buzz” of the past month has been frozen upon the “big freeze”.

Alas, I’ve been the target of a few verbal barbs coming from some self-assured climate change sceptics. To which I’ve managed a half-hearted smile attempting to avoid my native impulse to expand their knowledge of statistics while utilizing prose impregnated with four-letter “encouragement”. All-in-all they seemed to have begun to occupy this particular patch of weather misfortune with joy…. as if they were children hearing the recorded bell of an ice cream van off in the distance during a heatwave.

I offer to them, as I offer to you now, that there is an opposite way of considering the current weather.

The immediate cause is the Arctic Oscillation (AO). This has been a very swift change in the atmospheric pressure distribution of the northern hemisphere between the middle and polar latitudes.

Per a London-based weblog ponitificator via my favorite rag: “When the AO is positive, the combination of high pressure in the mid-latitudes and low pressure further north blocks the outflow of extremely cold air from the arctic. A more “negative” AO allows the cold to slip further south.”

From my readings I’ve discovered that this December’s oscillation over the Atlantic was the most negative for more than 100 years. This negative pressure has allowed Arctic air to flow into normally temperate regions of our Hemisphere. Hence the 3 feet of residual snow on the lower realm of my mini-kingdom.

However… the sheer intensity of the cold we’ve experienced has proven moderated by man-made global warming. If this identical distribution had taken place 60 years ago (or earlier), before carbon dioxide had exceeded “written history” thresholds (whether released by hairless apes or not), the current freeze would have been a complete degree colder.

And a single degree colder is just as serious as a single degree warmer. Lucky for us, the AO is returning to normal as I type this.