SINCE it will soon be summer, I thought I’d talk a little bit about global warming. And you know climate change isn’t just about warming up. Several months ago, I talked about how a storm in Alaska had caused a giant iceberg to break up off the coast of Antarctica, literally on the other side of the planet.

Well, researchers at the University of Wisconsin have discovered something really interesting about a couple of freak events that happened in the continental U.S. In May 2010, Tennessee experienced a torrential rainfall of more than 20 inches. And in April 2011, there was a historic outbreak of tornadoes centered on Alabama.

Both events are apparently linked to a rare coupling of the polar jet stream and the subtropical jet stream. But here’s the fascinating part: these researchers think these unprecedented storms were caused by events that happened in a place that we’re all familiar with – the western Pacific, which is about 9,000 miles away from the U.S. midsection.

The mechanism that caused the storms originates during spring or fall, when organized complexes of tropical thunderstorms over Indonesia push the subtropical jet stream north, causing it to merge with the polar jet stream. The researchers call the resulting band of wind a “superjet.”

A superjet and its circulating winds carry roughly twice as much energy as a typical jet stream and when the normally separate jet streams sit stacked up, it causes very strong vertical circulation that produces clouds, heavy rain and tornadoes under the right conditions.

The scientists think a warmer climate may be triggering the overlap of the jet streams and that the high impact weather it causes may become more frequent. The next step, the researchers said, will be to examine historic weather data to see if these jet stream interactions have happened in the past and whether they triggered violent weather. This, they hope, will lead to more accurate long term weather forecasts.

Of course, the biggest news as far as climate change goes is what’s happening to the ice caps at the poles. Alan Werner, professor of geology at Mount Holyoke College, said that melting Arctic ice is no longer just evidence of a rapidly warming planet: it's also part of the problem. That’s because the loss of snow and ice makes Earth's surface less reflective, and the sun’s heat is absorbed in greater amounts by the exposed dark ocean or tundra.

This means that the high latitudes are warming at a much faster rate than the other latitudes. Werner made his observations after the National Snow and Ice Data Center announcement stated the surface area of Arctic sea ice reached a new low in 2012, breaking a previous record reached in 2007.

So, do we believe them? I went to London last fall and took a non-stop flight out of Tokyo. If you look at a globe, you can trace my great circle flight path and you’ll see that virtually the entire trip took place over Siberia, that vast snow and ice-covered plain in the far north. I’ve flown over Siberia in the past and it was always covered with snow.

Except that in the last week of September last year on the outbound flight and the first week of October on the return flight, I saw no snow. That’s right. NO. SNOW. The entire flight was over endless empty vistas of brown, treeless dirt. NO snow.

Global warming? I’ve seen it with my own eyes, boys and girls, and I believe. I believe.

Cruise on over to The Deep website at www.thedeepradioshow.com to learn more about climate change and many other topics. Enjoy!