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.

Comments

Re:Scientific Reports

[Dog-Cow]

If you don't want to be convinced, not even a shot in the face will convince you that firearms can be dangerous. So it goes with anything else.

Re:Scientific Reports

[ASDFnz]

No, there's not.

Some compelling evidence, yes, but I've seen nothing that's convincing.

Peer reviewed research? There is oodles of it, check out TFA for one of them.

Of course some probably are more easily convinced than others.

I can't argue with that, you conspiricy theory types are the most gullible people on the planet, all you need is a badly written website, a few poorly researched facts and people like you will believe anything.

Re:There's an interesting statistic

[AmiMoJo]

You can explain these results quite simply. People in countries that have benefited greatly from causing climate change through the emission of CO2 are less willing to accept that their actions are the cause. People in countries where pollution is bad and the effects of climate change are more apparent are more likely to accept it.

Japan is an outlier because people there tend to accept expert opinion and broad scientific consensus, rather than assume they know better or that it's some giant conspiracy theory. If you look at the rest of the countries where people are skeptical, it's obviously Dunning-Kruger at work. Most of the people who think they are "experts" on climate change really just googled a load of conspiracy theory web sites and enjoyed the confirmation that their 20 MPG SUV isn't the problem.