Video Shows How Extreme Weather Is More Prevalent Because of Unusual Jet Streams

Jet stream on July 12, 2018 showing large undulations. 

Video Shows How Extreme Weather Is More Prevalent Because of Unusual Jet Streams
https://www.inverse.com/article/50748-extreme-weather-unusual-jet-stream

Climate change is not a predicted threat but a catastrophe currently afflicting humankind. The summer of 2018 was a testament to this fact: The season witnessed record heat waves around the planet, unprecedented flooding events, and wildfires unmatched in magnitude and scope. California’s wildfires, which continue to ravage the state, are the worst in its history, and even the chilled Arctic Circle experienced historic outbreaks.

In a video recently released by Pennsylvania State University, atmospheric science professor Michael Mann, Ph.D., explains that extreme weather events, like the kind seen this summer, are becoming more prevalent because of climate change and are consistent with what climate models have previously predicted. While droughts, floods, and fires may seem like disconnected events, they are all connected through a particular phenomenon wrought by human-caused climate change: unusual jet stream patterns.

These unusual jet stream patterns, Mann and his colleagues explain in a Science paper published in October, ignite Quasi-Resonant Amplification events — moments of extreme weather tha manifest as the sort of calamities that plagued the summer. A jet stream pattern is one that is undulating dramatically north and south as it crosses the northern hemisphere. Here, the team determined that when a jet stream has big “peaks and troughs,” extreme weather events will soon follow.

As greenhouse gases accumulate, more unusual jets stream patterns occur — the team notes that if greenhouse emissions continue to escalate at their current rate, Quasi-Resonant Amplification events will increase by 50 percent by the end of the century.

Ironically, an effort to improve human health could make this situation worst. Anthropogenic — human-linked — aerosols are linked to industrialization since they emerge from the burning of coal and oil. As air pollutants, they’re very unhealthy for people, so a number of European and North American nations have worked to remove aerosol-generating pollutants. However, while still definitely bad for us, aerosols reflect heat away from the planet and can balance out the heating effect of greenhouse gases.