Hugely distorted jet stream causes havoc

July 26, 2021 admin Comments 0 Comment

25 July, 2021

On above image, the Jet Stream can be seen forming Omega patterns on the Northern Hemisphere, going circular over the Arctic Ocean and crossing the Equator.

Why does the Jet Stream get distorted?

The Arctic gets hit much harder by temperature rises. This causes the difference in temperature to narrow between the North Pole and the Equator.

This in turn slows down the speed at which wind travels from the Tropics to the North Pole.

This in turn makes the Jet Stream more wavy, just like a slow-moving river over flat land will take a winding route and meander.

The Jet Streams used to circumnavigate the globe in narrow bands. World climate zones used to be kept well apart by stable Jet Streams.

Polar Jet Stream and Subtropical Jet Stream – NOAA image

On the Northern Hemisphere, the coldest point used to be the North Pole, so wind used to flow from the tropics to the North Pole.

This resulted in two Jet Streams forming, circum-navigating the globe in relatively narrow and straight bands, i.e. the Polar Jet Stream at 60°N and the Subtropical Jet Stream at about 30°N.

Polar Jet Stream (blue) and Subtropical
Jet Stream (red) – NOAA image

For many years, Jennifer Francis et al. has been warning that this will cause more extreme weather in mid latitudes.

Arctic-News has described Deformation of the Jet Stream as Opening the Doorways to Doom, i.e. one of the feedbacks (#10) of accelerated Arctic warming.

As a result of this distortion of the Jet Stream, extreme weather events are striking with ever greater frequency and intensity. The Northern Hemisphere has been hit by stronger heatwaves, forest fires, storms and flooding.

The image below shows that in 2020, in the U.S. alone, a record number of 22 climate and weather disasters took place that each caused damage of more than 1 billion dollar, while jointly causing the deaths of 262 people.