What is the cause of the recent cold snap? For the climate
change denial lobby, it justifies their welter of abuse and means that global
warming isn’t happening. But for those capable of engaging brain and
considering what goes on in the real world, the answer seems to lie in the
significant melting of arctic ice during last summer, together with changing
behaviour of the Atlantic jet stream.
Recently, the jet stream – winds in the upper atmosphere
that direct the steady passage of weather systems from the UK’s south-west
approaches and (hopefully) past the north-west corner of Scotland – has been
misfiring badly, as I observed a
while back. So weather systems are slowing down, or passing further south.
In both cases this can bring colder easterly and north easterly winds.
Where the melting arctic ice comes in is the pushing south
of a mass of colder air, helping the formation of “blocking” areas of high pressure, which prevent weather systems
from taking their usual path. A “blocking”
high pressure area was responsible for the December 2010 cold snap, and more of
the same contributed to last summer’s repeated downpours.
Sun - utterly clueless. And wrong
This is not a difficult concept to grasp, unless of course
you are a hack at a tabloid paper, in which case it becomes akin to rocket
science. The idea of the Atlantic jet stream being pushed further south has
been shown in the Sun as having it
tracking over Africa. This is total crap. The Mail tries a little harder, but still doesn’t nail it. Fortunately,
there are better resources online.
Mail - not as clueless or wrong as the Sun. But not right
A quick look at metcheck.com
shows today’s visualisation of the Atlantic jet stream, and sure enough it is
driving weather systems to the south, and hence today’s slow progress of a low
pressure area with a lot of cold easterly winds on its leading edge. Now look
at the jet stream forecast for next Wednesday, which shows a more normal track,
although it could do with being yet further north at this time of year.
Graphics from metcheck.com
And what neither of these papers tell their readers is that
it is just as easy for weather systems to get stuck in summer as in winter, and
hence the grim heatwave recently experienced in Russia. Temperatures average
out around the globe, so if one area gets colder weather, somewhere else is
getting warmer conditions. That’s why the “it’s
snowing so global warming isn’t happening” idea is so daft.
Jet stream in almost normal position
Also, the “what an ice
age might look like” in the Sun is
sheer idiocy (no change there, then). You only get ice age conditions when the
ice is there all the time. And that isn’t going to happen. It’s sad to see
millions of readers patronised in this way, but then, this is the title with a
positive trust rating of just 10%. And 10% sums up the amount of accurate
content in that article.
No specialist newsroom
knowledge equals crap coverage, whatever the paper.
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