Weathering the Weather!

By: Natalie Spalding, Senior Staff Writer

What is up with the temperature lately? The weather statistics have been up and down lately, reaching records on both ends, high and low. Everyone has been wondering what is going on! America’s not the only one either; the whole globe has been experiencing these drastic changes ever since the beginning of the 2020s.

Earth has been rising in temperature for 50 years now. 2024 is currently the hottest year on record, according to Lindsey and Dahlman from Climate.gov, increasing at a near 300% linear rate. That means that the Earth has been heating up about three times faster. Summers have been scorching these past few years. Drier air from these blistering months has also contributed to the increase in wildfires. This increase in warmth does not just mean that summers are getting hotter, though. With the increase in temperature in the Arctic, too, all of that cold has to go somewhere.

The polar vortex, a cold “storm” that rotates above the Arctic primarily during the winter, is funnelling down to the rest of the world every now and then. As the Earth gets warmer, and in turn, the North gets warmer, the cold that is usually up there leaks more toward us than usual. Really, global warming, or more aptly climate change, is giving us more heat and cold. With the way that global warming patterns are looking now, we are due for increasingly hotter-than-usual summers and colder-than-usual winters!

For some, freezing winters are not nearly as fun as warm summers, so bundle up everyone! Gracie Ott, an SJA summer-loving junior, shares her opinion about the temperatures.

“Global warming in the summer might be more fun when you’re at the lake or beach, but I have learned to hate what effect it has on the winter. It’s miserable just walking from my car to my house!” Ott said.

That’s not all, either. With these heat-filled and bitterly frigid months comes the wrath of the clouds as well. Precipitation has been climbing substantially lately, an example being the mammoth snowstorm on January 24th. Anthony Buda at Climate Hubs reports that for each degree the air and Earth temperature increases, the total amount of moisture that the atmosphere is capable of keeping also increases by 7%. Temperatures are rising, so the atmosphere has been holding (and releasing) even more water than usual, which explains our recent growth in rain and snowfall. Similar to the temperature, this pattern will continue, and precipitation will continue to increase, meaning wetter seasons.

It is clear that recent climate change is affecting the entire world. Usually, the ocean is the primary assistant in buffering these changes, but it is hitting its limit in many aspects. The ocean itself is being changed by global warming, so it is incapable of helping slow rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels like it used to. Its circulation patterns are also changing, which in turn changes the places the warm waters and temperatures are being dispersed throughout the world. This is also a reason why this recent weather is not what we are used to.

Most of the climate change happening in the last few decades is due to global warming, caused primarily by humans. We have been burning more and more fossil fuels like methane and other gases, cutting down trees and doing many more harmful activities to our planet.

As a whole, we haven’t made that great of an effort to stop our world from changing, and it isn’t only affecting the planet. It’s hurting ourselves, too. Katie Lodes, a biology teacher at SJA who has done a lot of work in the environmental field, comments on the issue.

“It goes without saying that the folks most affected by this are the folks least responsible for it. Climate change is most harming the vulnerable…we need to practice more sustainability—we have a very consumeristic society. We could do better. We need to move beyond and start subsidizing more clean energy sources and holding discussions about other ways that we could start to do better…there’s hope. Don’t buy into the idea that there isn’t any hope; there definitely are things that we can do. Educate yourself. Do some digging with some reputable sources and ask questions,” said Mrs. Lodes.

The shifting patterns in the weather have been crazy, there is no doubt! Knowing how harmful we can be to our planet, we at SJA can make plenty of conscious efforts to prevent these negative outlooks. The United States Environmental Protection Agency encourages everyone to lower their carbon footprints by recycling, reusing all materials, and trying to use more renewable energy sources for their homes when the time comes to choose them!

Driving less is not as easy a method to choose for some, but there are still plenty of other things we can do to protect our planet. Earth Angels is an amazing club at SJA that is all about protecting the Earth. Even small things like putting your used plastic cups in their bins on top of the trash cans around school can make a difference. Anything can help! The littlest things are sometimes the most important. If you want to learn or do more, talk to Mrs. Lodes or join the Earth Angels club to help save the planet.

Our climate has been crazy as of late, that’s for certain. Humans may be causing the craziness, but humans can also prevent it. There are plenty of actions everyone can take to protect the Earth from further spinning out of control. As long as everyone capable of helping takes them, we can make an impact on this insane climate change. For now, we’ll just have to weather the upcoming weather, as wacky as it has been and may turn out.

Works Cited

Buda, Anthony. “When it rains, it pours: How climate change fuels heavier rains.” USDA Climate Hubs, https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/northeast/topic/when-it-rains-it-pours-how-climate-change-fuels-heavier-rains. Accessed 23 January 2026.

Lindsey, Rebecca, and LuAnn Dahlman. “Climate change: global temperature | NOAA Climate.gov.” Climate, 29 May 2025, https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature. Accessed 23 January 2026.

“What You Can Do about Climate Change | US EPA.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, https://www.epa.gov/climate-change/what-you-can-do-about-climate-change. Accessed 23 January 2026.