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Climate Change Is Altering Global Air Currents (independent.co.uk)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: One of the scientists who demonstrated conclusively that global warming was an unnatural event with the famous "hockey stick" graph is now warning that giant jetstreams which circle the planet are being altered by climate change. Jetstreams are influenced by the difference in temperatures between the Arctic and the equator. But the Arctic has been warming much faster than tropical climates -- the island of Svalbard, for example was 6.5 degrees celsius warmer last year compared to the average between 1961 and 1990. The land has also been warming faster than the sea. Both of those factors were changing the flow of these major air currents to create "extreme meanders" which were helping to cause "extreme weather events", Professor Michael Mann said. In a paper in the journal Scientific Reports, Professor Mann and other researchers wrote that evidence of the effect of climate change on the jetstreams had "only recently emerged from the background noise of natural variability." They said that projections of the effect on the jetstreams in "state-of-the-art" climate models were "mirrored" in "multiple" actual temperature measurements. The jetstream normally flows reasonably consistently around the planet, but can develop loops extending north and south. The researchers, who studied temperature records going back to 1870 as well as satellite data, said these loops could grow "very large" or even "grind to a halt" rather than moving from west to east. The effect has been most pronounced during the past 40 years, they found.

7 of 369 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Scientific Reports by ASDFnz · · Score: 3, Informative

    There is tons of it.

  2. Re:More fabricated garbage by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 1, Informative

    here's the thing. If Global Warming/Climate Science suddenly was disproven...that same research money would plow into figuring out what/how/where the science went wrong.

    It's all science like!

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  3. How often do you reinvent the wheel? by Capsaicin · · Score: 5, Informative

    why isn't there more recent material published showing the proven change?

    For the same reason physics journals are not filled with recent papers investigating whether falling objects move towards or away from Earth. The human contribution (established not only by the C12/C13 ratios but also by estimates of rates of fossil fuel consumption) is no longer a matter of serious dispute. The argument has moved on to issues of climate sensitivity; just what the actual effect will be on tropical storm formation &c. If you want to see the original work establishing the human fingerprint you would need to look at papers from last century, when this was still a live issue. You are better off going to the most recent IPCC summation of the science (which will link you through to original papers), which in this case would be Chapter 8 and Chapter 10 of the 2015 WG1 report of AR5.

    In the meantime that link provided gives a very nice concise summary of one of the lines of evidence by which the human fingerprint was established.

    I would think that ...

    ... you would have thanked OP for that informative link. Or were you not the AC who wanted to know how we know about the anthropogenic contribution to observed warming?

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    Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
  4. Re:Extreme Weather Events... Like an Ice Age... by riverat1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The time scale to get an ice age really rolling would be on the order of thousands of years. But don't worry, CO2 levels would have to drop well below 300 ppm before a new ice age could commence. However if the Gulf Stream shuts down it could cause northern Europe to cool down quite a bit.

  5. There's an interesting statistic by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Informative

    I can't really explain it, but it's at least interesting to ponder. Take a look at Climate change opinion by country.

    Awareness that there is something like this is pretty much as one would expect: People in countries with a free or mostly free press and open and affordable access to the internet are way more informed about it than people in countries where information is scarce, hard to come by or government controlled. Also, the more spare time people have to waste, the more informed they claim to be.

    The map on whether it's caused by humans is interesting. Why is practically all of South America convinced that humans are the source of global warming? There is also an interesting difference between Western/Middle Europe and Eastern Europe/Russia, with the former being more convinced of human caused global warming than the latter. It's not quite the divide the Iron Curtain formed, rather it seems to be more a matter between former USSR countries being less convinced than the Rest of Europe, with some noteworthy exceptions in the BeNeLux states and England. And Japan being a real puzzle, being absolutely convinced of human-caused global warming and it being a threat.

    Really interesting is now, though, when you compare that map (human caused yes/no) with the last map that deals with the question whether people think that global warming is a threat. It looks like whether people consider climate change a threat is more dependent on the country having a free press than whether they think it's human made. It's also interesting that in Western Europe more people think it's a threat than people think it's caused by humans.

    All in all, pretty interesting.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  6. Re:What precentage caused by man? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'll get modded down for this, but reason is not the way to convince people like that to act. Money is.

    That's why taxes on pollution and CO2 emissions are so effective. Of course, deniers will claim it's a conspiracy by LED lightbulb manufacturers and the mighty wind power lobby that seems to have completely eclipsed the underfunded, ineffective oil lobby.

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  7. Re:Extreme Weather Events... Like an Ice Age... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    No they didn't. Jet streams have undergone unprecedented changes that have never before been recorded. How is this crap modded informative?