NASA Talk Examines What¹s Old and New About the Polar Vortex

Baby, it’s cold outside – or not….

On Tuesday, April 5, at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, Lynn Harvey will present “A Blast from the Past – Misinformation in Your Nightly Weather Report and the History of the Polar Vortex” at 2 p.m. in the Pearl Young Theater.

Harvey will be available to answer questions from the media during a news briefing at 1:15 p.m. that day. Media who wish to do so should contact Chris Rink at 757-864-6786, or by e-mail at chris.rink@nasa.gov, by noon on the day of the talk for credentials and entry to the center.

That same evening at 7:30, Harvey will present a similar program for the general public at the Virginia Air & Space Center in downtown Hampton. This Sigma Series event is free and no reservations are required.

Harvey will present a history of the polar vortex including misconceptions and summarize how the atmospheric phenomenon is expected to change in a warmer climate.

A former NASA Langley researcher in the Science Directorate’s Chemistry and Dynamics Branch, Harvey received her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in atmospheric science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She currently works at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has published work on ozone loss, polar clouds, the diagnosis of the polar vortices and stratospheric anticyclones, warming in the stratosphere, and cold air outbreaks in the troposphere.

For more information about NASA Langley’s Colloquium and Sigma Series Lectures, visit:

http://colloqsigma.larc.nasa.gov