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ljgeoffI am not a scientist. I'm a well-read amateur, and some of this I don't really get, mainly the jet stream works with the different layers of atmosphere, the troposphere, tropopause and stratosphere, but I think that it's important for folks see that arctic ice, the jet stream and our new weather patterns are all linked together.
There was a little cyclone spinning in the arctic ocean a couple of days ago. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal, but because the ice up there is all First Year Ice, the cyclone was more dangerous. There's a really great animation of it -- go look.
It's not like the cyclone caused a big hole to appear in the ice -- it did worse. It caused lots of long cracks. These cracks means that there are now thousands of miles of new ice edges for the water and sun to chew on. Not good.
The bottom line on the jet stream is that in order to have a robust system, there has to be a significant temperature difference between the equator and the pole. As the arctic warms faster than the equator and that temperature difference lessens, the jet stream weakens and even stalls.
The stalled jet stream then strands weather patterns -- wet and dry systems just sit and spin, and are not moved off west to east as we're used to seeing. Additionally, there's a much greater chance of a blocking high, where a large dome of air sits over Greenland or Siberia and blocks the weakened jet stream.
Here's a really long video of Dr. Jennifer Frances. If you want to be understand this, be able to talk to people about why the weird weather is happening, and have the time, take a look.
There was a little cyclone spinning in the arctic ocean a couple of days ago. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal, but because the ice up there is all First Year Ice, the cyclone was more dangerous. There's a really great animation of it -- go look.
It's not like the cyclone caused a big hole to appear in the ice -- it did worse. It caused lots of long cracks. These cracks means that there are now thousands of miles of new ice edges for the water and sun to chew on. Not good.
The bottom line on the jet stream is that in order to have a robust system, there has to be a significant temperature difference between the equator and the pole. As the arctic warms faster than the equator and that temperature difference lessens, the jet stream weakens and even stalls.
The stalled jet stream then strands weather patterns -- wet and dry systems just sit and spin, and are not moved off west to east as we're used to seeing. Additionally, there's a much greater chance of a blocking high, where a large dome of air sits over Greenland or Siberia and blocks the weakened jet stream.
Here's a really long video of Dr. Jennifer Frances. If you want to be understand this, be able to talk to people about why the weird weather is happening, and have the time, take a look.