The Stratospheric Polar Vortex, a term that has often, though inaccurately, gained media attention in recent years, is a seasonal high-altitude atmospheric structure that forms in autumn, consolidates in winter, and dissolves in spring. Its developments and shifts from the vertical axis of polar latitudes are often responsible for sudden changes in tropospheric circulation. Variations that, especially in recent years, have led to the abrupt spread of polar air towards mid-latitudes.

The polar vortex, as we will see, is a structure present on other planets as well. In the past, it has played a fundamental role in shaping Earth’s climatic history, particularly in the last 2.5 million years, characterized by a sequence of recurring glacial periods and shorter interglacial periods.

Today, thanks to the whims of the polar vortex, we have the fortune (or misfortune) of occasionally experiencing what the average climate conditions were like during the last glacial maximum. We can temporarily return to the conditions that prevailed on Earth 20,000 years ago.

But there’s a danger lurking – the possibility that over time (some suggest within a couple of decades at most), the polar vortex might collapse definitively, leading us not to just occasional adventurous cold weeks, but to a permanent ice age!

Probable or only possible?

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