Bad news: Jet stream is shifting north
Uh oh. Bad news if you live on Earth -- it looks like the jet stream is shifting northward, altering the weather at a faster rate than local environments can adapt to it.
Wait -- some background info: What is the jet stream? It's a band of high winds that sits way above land and basically controls the weather for the U.S. There is more than one jet stream in the world that control different regions' weather, but the one of most interest to us is the same one that makes it about 30 minutes quicker to fly from Boston to London than the other way around (and makes it more turbulent). The higher our northern jet stream shifts upward, the drier the southern and southwestern U.S. becomes (bad news for drought-ravaged regions like Ga.), with the potential for big storms shifting north (bad news for densely populated northeast cities).
Says Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Stanford, Calif., "Basically look south of where you are and that's probably a good guess of what your weather may be like in a few decades.''
According to the study, this jet-stream shift may be due directly to global warming and is actually a phenomenon that has been forecast to happen for quite some time based on current warming conditions and trends. And, at a rate of about 18 feet per day (1.25 miles per year), plants just can't keep up with the shift, which could lead to big eco-problems -- in other words, the trees can't adapt quickly enough to their changing environment (evolution just doesn't work *that* fast), thus they are unable to survive.
What can we do to fix it? Well, not much, which is why this news is so bad. We as humans (especially those of my friends who share the U.S. with me) have officially transitioned from prevention to recovery mode, and thus the eco-chant of "reduce, reuse, recycle" (in that order) needs to get louder.
Sorry for being a downer -- I hope you all have a happy Earth Day.
Wait -- some background info: What is the jet stream? It's a band of high winds that sits way above land and basically controls the weather for the U.S. There is more than one jet stream in the world that control different regions' weather, but the one of most interest to us is the same one that makes it about 30 minutes quicker to fly from Boston to London than the other way around (and makes it more turbulent). The higher our northern jet stream shifts upward, the drier the southern and southwestern U.S. becomes (bad news for drought-ravaged regions like Ga.), with the potential for big storms shifting north (bad news for densely populated northeast cities).
Says Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Stanford, Calif., "Basically look south of where you are and that's probably a good guess of what your weather may be like in a few decades.''
According to the study, this jet-stream shift may be due directly to global warming and is actually a phenomenon that has been forecast to happen for quite some time based on current warming conditions and trends. And, at a rate of about 18 feet per day (1.25 miles per year), plants just can't keep up with the shift, which could lead to big eco-problems -- in other words, the trees can't adapt quickly enough to their changing environment (evolution just doesn't work *that* fast), thus they are unable to survive.
What can we do to fix it? Well, not much, which is why this news is so bad. We as humans (especially those of my friends who share the U.S. with me) have officially transitioned from prevention to recovery mode, and thus the eco-chant of "reduce, reuse, recycle" (in that order) needs to get louder.
Sorry for being a downer -- I hope you all have a happy Earth Day.
Labels: jet streams, science, weather
This entry was posted by Amber, on Friday, April 18, 2008. You can
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