Few across North America need be reminded that global weather patterns over the past half decade or so seem to have been swinging wildly from one extreme to another.

Scientists have been steadily gathering data to try to answer a prevailing question: Why?

One of the most widely discussed theories of what meteorologists call “weather whiplash” has come from research papers by Jennifer Francis, Ph.D., a Research Professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

Independent videographer Peter Sinclair, who produces a monthly video exclusively for this site, in late 2012 interviewed Francis, and also Weather Underground’s Jeff Masters, for a deeper view of emerging observations of climate change, arctic ice, jet stream flow, and global weather patterns.

Now, in 2013, a year that in North America is almost a mirror image of 2012’s extremes, Sinclair followed-up with Dr. Francis, and asks what’s the same, what’s different, and where is the scientific evidence telling us?