“Pennsylvania: the state that can’t make up its mind about the weather.” One can often hear many variations of that quote in all regions of the state. However, one question that people tend to avoid is: “why?” Why is the weather being so stingy, and why now more than ever? Why are our actions as human beings playing a part in the turbulent weather? The answer is a topic highly disputed among many people today: climate change. This then leads to another operative question: what is a way that climate change is directly affecting how our weather is acting? The answer to this question lies in a giant wind tunnel in the sky called the jet stream. In this essay, I will give an analysis of how climate change clearly affects the jet stream through rising carbon dioxide emissions, causing more extreme weather and weather anomalies.
The North American jet stream. The differently colored bands represent the different wind speeds – the darker the color, the faster the wind speed.
In order to assess how jet streams change and affect our climate, it first would be imperative to define what exactly jet streams are. Jet streams are bands of strong winds that wrap around the planet at the middle latitudes between the equator and the poles, and they control the direction of weather systems (Alfred Wegener Institute). Every time a warmer air system moves through an area, it’s because of the fluctuation in the jet streams and the different kinds of fronts jet streams bring. The jet streams have waves that occasionally fluctuate above and below their normal median point, and in between these points is where different pressure systems lie, and subsequently different weather systems and storms. This causes the differently pressured systems to help the environment maintain stability. In other words, the jet streams “help maintain our planet’s habitable climate” (Cook). They are controlled by the differences in temperature between the cold, dry weather of the poles and the warm, humid weather of the equator. However, because of society’s lack of conscientiousness with regards to how we treat the environment, the changes in the atmosphere are affecting the steadiness in the jet stream.
These changes in the air quality and temperature are quickly diminishing due to climate change (Samenow). Because of rising carbon dioxide emissions, the Earth’s climate is rising in temperature, clocking in at a median temperature rise of .6 degrees Celsius (Ritchie, Hannah, and Max Roser). These rising temperatures are causing the ice in the poles to melt, increasing the overall temperature around the poles. This substantially decreases the temperature difference that the jet streams rely on in order to maintain a steady balance in the climate: “‘Our study shows that the changes in the jet stream are at least partly due to the loss of Arctic sea ice. If the ice cover continues to dwindle, we believe that both the frequency and intensity of the extreme weather events previously observed in the middle latitudes will increase,’ says Prof Markus Rex, Head of Atmospheric Research at the AWI” (Alfred Wegener Institute). What now happens is a concept called “quasi-resonant amplification” – the jet streams’ “waves” fluctuate far more strongly than normal, bringing cold air further south and warm air further north. Clearly, some of these environments are not used to having these kinds of weather conditions – for example, Pennsylvania is nowhere near Tornado Alley (the area of the Midwest most prone to tornado-causing weather conditions). Yet I [author], a native of Pennsylvania, have never seen as many tornadoes or tornado watches and warnings, nor heard nor read of them in Pennsylvania’s weather history, as there have been in the most recent years. I’ve [author] come to realize that the reason for these more recent occurrences is because Pennsylvania, a normally cooler, dryer climate, has had more warm and humid air as a result of climate change and the fluctuation of the northern jet stream. What now needs to be addressed is the carbon dioxide emissions that are causing these environmental anomalies and the extreme peaks and troughs in the jet streams’ patterns.
A reliable, detailed and exhaustive data source called Our World in Data, provides all sorts of information with regards to the many different aspects of trends in carbon dioxide emissions. However, the chart shown below outlines the world’s general trend in the rise of carbon dioxide emissions:
As can be seen, the overall track in emissions tends to show an exponential trend, so I’m making the assumption to treat this graph as a variation of the exponential function graph, \( \text{f(x)} = e^{x} \). So, if these trends continue as they are, what would total carbon dioxide emissions be in the year 2050? In this scenario, f(x) will be treated as the amount of CO2 emissions, and x will be the number of years, as per the setup in the graph above. Since the graph begins at the year 1751, we would need to find out the number of years in between 2050 and 1751 to plug into x.
\[ 2050 \text{ years} – 1751 \text{ years} = 299 \text{ years}\]
Plugging the value 299 into our exponential function will give us an idea of the amount of CO2 emissions in the year 2050:
\[ \text{f(x)} = e^{299} = ~7.14 \times 10^{129} \text{ tons} \div 1,000,000,000 = ~7.14 \times 10^{120} \text{ billion tons}\]
Clearly, this is an inordinately large number – the estimated amount in 2050 is over \(2 \times 10^{110}\) times the amount of CO2 emissions in 2017! If this trend in the climate continues at this rate, the jet stream would subsequently become incredibly weaker than it is now, maybe potentially to a degree beyond repair.
Climate change is an undeniable phenomenon, and its effects can be seen throughout the world through the impact the warming has had on the jet streams. The rise in carbon dioxide emissions is the clear culprit of the melting of the poles and their subsequent effect on the jet streams’ extreme deviance in activity. However, hope is not lost: “Although model projections suggest these extreme jet-stream patterns will increase as the climate warms, the study concluded that their increase can be slowed if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced along with particulate pollution in developing countries” (Samenow). There is more that can be done to save the planet – if more effort is made to become a greener society and reduce the emissions that all of the major countries emit, the jet streams can potentially return to some degree of normalcy. However, that effort needs to be made now. Not later. The fate of the planet is, almost literally, in our hands.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bibliography
Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. “A warming Arctic produces weather extremes in our latitudes.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 28 May 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190528140115.htm>.
Cook, Terri. “How Will the Jet Stream Respond to Future Warming?” EOS, American Geophysical Union, 20 May 2019, https://eos.org/research-spotlights/how-will-the-jet-stream-respond-to-future-warming.
Ritchie, Hannah, and Max Roser. “CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Our World in Data, Our World in Data, 11 May 2017, https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions.
Samenow, Jason. “Study: Freak Summer Weather and Wild Jet-Stream Patterns Are on the Rise Because of Global Warming.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 31 Oct. 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2018/10/31/study-freak-summer-weather-wild-jet-stream-patterns-are-rise-due-global-warming/.