Scientists declare ‘global climate emergency’ after jet stream crosses equator

[edgitarra]

Dunno if it was already posted!
I found it here
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/unprecedented-scientists-declare-global-climate-emergency-after-jet-stream-crosses-equator/

Cimate scientists this week expressed alarm after “unprecedented” data showed the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream crossing the Equator.

In a column on Tuesday, environmental blogger Robert Scribbler noted that the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream had merged with the Southern Hemisphere Jet Stream.

“It’s the very picture of weather weirding due to climate change. Something that would absolutely not happen in a normal world,” he wrote. “Something, that if it continues, basically threatens seasonal integrity.”

“Like many extreme events resulting from human-forced climate change — this co-mingling of upper level airs from one Hemisphere with another is pretty fracking strange,” Scribbler explained. “Historically, the Tropics — which produce the tallest and thickest air mass in the world — have served as a mostly impenetrable barrier to upper level winds moving from one Hemisphere to another. But as the Poles have warmed due to human-forced climate change, the Hemispherical Jet Streams have moved out of the Middle Latitudes more and more. ”

“That’s bad news for seasonality,” he continued. “You get this weather-destabilizing and extreme weather generating mixing of seasons that is all part of a very difficult to deal with ‘Death of Winter’ type scenario.”

University of Ottawa climate scientist Paul Beckwith called the new behavior “unprecedented.”

“Our climate system behaviour continues to behave in new and scary ways that we have never anticipated, or seen before,” Beckwith observed. “Welcome to climate chaos. We must declare a global climate emergency.”

In a YouTube video, Beckwith said that the jet stream behavior signaled “massive hits to the food supply” and “massive geopolitical unrest.”

 

[mkrnhr]

I'm usually skeptical of any claim of "unprecedentness". Jet stream has been known for a short time, so what if any phenomenon happened before observations began?
Incidentally, A. Watts reported on these claims at WUWT with some links included: Worst science of the year: “‘Unprecedented’: Scientists declare ‘global climate emergency’ after jet stream crosses equator”
One notes that such "crossing" happened in 1975 when "global" temperatures where decreasing, maybe a prelude to the cooling phase we entered in, towards a little or a big ice age, depending on how it plays out. OSIT

 

[Gary]

I'm usually skeptical of any claim of "unprecedentness". Jet stream has been known for a short time, so what if any phenomenon happened before observations began?
Incidentally, A. Watts reported on these claims at WUWT with some links included: Worst science of the year: “‘Unprecedented’: Scientists declare ‘global climate emergency’ after jet stream crosses equator”
One notes that such "crossing" happened in 1975 when "global" temperatures where decreasing, maybe a prelude to the cooling phase we entered in, towards a little or a big ice age, depending on how it plays out. OSIT

Paul Beckwith who posted the youtube video 'Unprecedented? Jet Stream Crosses Equator' has since commented:

"Not quite unprecedented; it has been pointed out to me that there were a few weaker incidents in 2015 and 2014."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKasUm77D0U

 

[Keit]

What if the event is significant (although perhaps not unprecedented) despite the wrong interpretation and the GW angle? Especially considering what Pierre wrote in his book?

For years, mainstream science claimed that the jet stream played a minor role in weather and was simply the result of ‘frontogenesis’, a complex process describing how convection (air movements) and temperature differences lead to jet stream circulation. [552]

Recently however, things have changed. Winter 2013–2014 was very harsh in North America [553] [554] with a persistent ‘polar vortex’ that lasted for weeks and whose shape followed almost exactly the ‘cold drop’ formed by the meandering Arctic jet stream pictured above. The evidence was quite obvious, so the narrative had to evolve:

Scientists are trying to understand if the unusual weather in the northern hemisphere this winter … is linked to climate change. One thing seems clear: Shifts in the Jet Stream play a key role and could become even more disruptive… Everyone is blaming the jet stream, which drives most weather in mid-latitudes. That would be a significant development. For what happens to the Jet Stream in the coming decades looks likely to be the key link between the abstractions of climate change and real weather we all experience. [555]

This analysis might indeed be closer to the true state of affairs. Evidence suggests that the jet streams are not powered by heat from the lower atmosphere but by electricity. At the altitude of the jet stream (about 10 km high), the atmosphere contains about 2,000 ions per cubic centimeter. [556] Air at this altitude is about 10 times more ionized than at ground level (figure 152).

...From this perspective, the jet stream is not a consequence of lower atmospheric phenomena but, on the contrary, is a driver of lower atmospheric phenomena, i.e. the weather we experience day to day.

Figure 154 shows that, in addition to meandering (blue arrow), a ‘weak’ jet stream also experiences an overall shift to the south. Typically, the jet stream blows roughly along the 45° north latitude in winter (blue arrow above) and around 60° north in summer (red arrow), but in recent years, we’ve seen more and more anomalies, with a weaker-than-usual jet stream meandering and drifting further south (and subsequently exposing temperate latitude to ‘polar vortices’).


So since about 1998, when the solar activity started to drop, the Arctic jet stream has shown signs of weakness (lower speed and more southerly location). Jet stream latitudinal oscillations have been acknowledged by mainstream science for years. They are allegedly due to changes in the Arctic oscillation. [561] So far, no convincing explanation has been provided for the causes of this ‘oscillation’. However, if the electric nature of our solar system is taken into account, shifts in the jet stream begin to make sense...

Therefore, if solar activity is weak, the jet stream should be observed at abnormally low latitudes. This is what has happened in recent years, particularly over Europe, with the jet stream as low as 15° north in winter (above North Africa) when it should be around 60° north (above Scotland)...

In this way, a lasting decrease in solar activity would induce an overall cooling of the ‘temperate’ latitudes that would be increasingly less separated from Arctic air by a more frequently and abnormally south-shifting polar jet stream. This could be an aggravating factor in the quick onset of an ice age.

The question is, if previous "weaker incidents" also led to the Northern hemisphere jet stream to cross into the Southern hemisphere one, or they just were lower?

And the sun had several of "totally spotless" episodes recently. Today as well. So could that be the cause?

Here's the video by the way, where you can see the jet stream crossing.

http://<iframe width="560" height="...0U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[mkrnhr]

What if the event is significant (although perhaps not unprecedented) despite the wrong interpretation and the GW angle? Especially considering what Pierre wrote in his book?

Exactly. One has to look at "long-term" trends of the jet stream behaviour. Jet stream circulation is influenced by the earth's electromagnetism and solar forcing and that in turn influences climate phenomena below. This kind of reports not only shifts the blame to the AGW by some magic thinking (if it's hot, it's global warming, if it's cold, it's global warming, etc.) but also distracts by focusing the rhetoric where it doesn't matter from how the general tendency of the jet stream circulation has been evolving (as well as other metrics) in the lastest months and years.

Added: One can see daily what the jet streams are doing through this link.