Extreme weather and the jet stream
Weather records are now routinely getting shattered across the United States, with recent severe rainstorms in California, freezing temperatures in Texas, and a warm January thaw for the northeast. Jennifer Francis, Senior Scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, joins Host Steve Curwood to explain why a climate disrupted jet stream is behind much of this extreme weather.
Read more and listen on Living on Earth.
Natural weather weirdness boosted by climate change behind extreme start to 2023
In a world getting used to extreme weather, 2023 is starting out more bonkers than ever and meteorologists are saying it’s natural weather weirdness with a bit of help from human-caused climate change.
Much of what’s causing problems worldwide is coming out of a roiling Pacific Ocean, transported by a wavy jet stream, experts said.
Farming destroyed Brazil’s rain forests. It could also save them
In a field of bare red dirt in São Paulo state, Paula Costa is trying to turn back the clock. Five hundred years ago, this land was part of the Mata Atlantica, a dense, diverse rain forest that covered 15% of Brazil. Its trees stretched more than 2,000 miles along the eastern Atlantic coast, and far inland. But today 93% of the forest has been stripped of trees, with much of it turned over to monoculture farming. Costa, a 36-year-old biologist, bangs the ground with her fist: it’s hard, the dry soil degraded by the tropical sun.
Yet on this sweltering morning in March 2022, a few green shoots have forced their way through the surface. The rain forest is making a comeback. “These will be jack beans. These are millet. These are radishes,” she says, fingering them lovingly. “They’re going to bring the soil back to life.”
Scientists say Arctic warming could be to blame for blasts of extreme cold
Research suggests that climate change is altering the jet stream, pushing frigid air down to southern climes more frequently. But the scientific jury is still out.
The data is clear: Rising global temperatures mean winters are getting milder, on average, and the sort of record-setting cold that spanned the country Friday is becoming rarer. But at the same time, global warming may be altering atmospheric patterns and pushing harsh outbreaks of polar air to normally moderate climates, according to scientists who are actively debating the link.
Drastic changes in the Arctic, which is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, are at the center of the discussion. Shifts in Arctic ice and snow cover are triggering atmospheric patterns that allow polar air to spread southward more often, according to recent research.
Read more on The Washington Post.
Boston is losing its snow wicked fast
New England is warming more quickly than almost anywhere else on Earth.
My first winter in Boston, the last patches of snow on my street didn’t melt until late June. It was 2015, the year the city broke its all-time record for annual snowfall: 110.3 inches, more than twice the average. Public transportation morphed into a hellscape. Schools racked up so many snow days that some had to extend the academic year. Dogs began to summit snowbanks to break out of fenced-in yards; a homegrown Yeti appeared to help locals shovel. The city eventually ran out of places to dump the piles of snow—prompting then-Mayor Marty Walsh to consider throwing it all into the harbor like so much British tea.
Continue reading on The Atlantic.
TIL about winter storms
Winters are warming faster than any other season here in the U.S. So why are some winter storms getting even more intense? Today, we’re going to explore the connections between climate change and extreme winter weather. For this episode, we sat down with atmospheric science expert Dr. Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
Read more and listen on TILclimate.
New abnormal: Climate disaster damage ‘down’ to $268 billion
This past year has seen a horrific flood that submerged one-third of Pakistan, one of the three costliest U.S. hurricanes on record, devastating droughts in Europe and China, a drought-triggered famine in Africa and deadly heat waves all over.
Yet this wasn’t climate change at its worst.
Read more on Associated Press News.
Fires to floods: ‘Weather whiplash’ defined my 2022, and maybe your 2023
This could be our disturbing new normal.
I’ve lived in the high desert of the southwestern US most of my life, primarily in New Mexico and Colorado. In those four decades, I’ve never seen it as dry here as in 2022. In all that time, I’ve also never seen it as wet as this year.
In northern New Mexico, the year began with months of unseasonal heat, dryness and extreme wind that fueled the largest wildfire of the year in the lower 48 states. It burned through 340,000 acres of the Sangre de Cristo mountains and destroyed or damaged over a thousand homes and other structures.
Then, in the middle of June, the annual monsoon rains thankfully arrived to douse the fires. But they stayed a couple months longer and dumped nearly twice as much moisture as the previous year (or the year before that). In fact, we were still seeing some monsoon pattern precipitation several weeks later than normal.